Summary: Onyx Storm

The GIST

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros is the third book in The Empyrean, the romantic fantasy series that began with Fourth Wing and continued with Iron Flame, and that is planned to run to five volumes. Published by Red Tower Books on January 21, 2025, it arrived as an event: it was on bestseller charts months ahead of release on pre-orders alone, bookstores threw launch parties that some readers attended in costume, and in its first week it sold 2.7 million copies, more than any other adult novel in the previous twenty years according to BookScan. Yarros promised "politics, new adventures, old enemies and of course, dragons", and the book delivers all four.

What sets it apart from its predecessors is its shape. The first two books lived inside Basgiath War College, the brutal school where Violet Sorrengail became a dragon rider. This one opens the map. It sends Violet and a hand-picked squad on a long quest across unknown isles, in search of a lost kind of dragon, new allies for a war that is going badly, and a cure for the man she loves. It is the middle book of the series, slower in places and more sprawling than the others, and it ends on a cliffhanger that has kept readers arguing ever since.

The Story

The story picks up shortly after the battle that closed Iron Flame. Basgiath has been defended against an invasion of venin, dark magic-wielders who drain power from the earth and fly with monstrous wyvern, but the price was terrible. Violet's mother gave her life to power the wardstone, the magical barrier that keeps the college safe. Violet's friend Sawyer lost a leg and doubts he will ride again. And Xaden Riorson, the shadow wielder Violet loves, now Duke of the province of Tyrrendor, reached for the earth's forbidden power in the fighting and has begun to turn venin himself.

That secret hangs over everything. A captured venin, Jack Barlowe, tells them that there is no cure and that venin do not want one. Only a few of Xaden's closest friends know what he has become. He is terrified of losing control and hurting Violet, and he keeps pulling away from her. One reviewer notes that Yarros writes his condition as a kind of addiction, a hunger for power that can be hidden but not easily fought. Violet refuses to give up on him. Her determination to find a cure drives much of what follows.

There is a second clock ticking. Violet's sister Mira discovers that the wards protecting Aretia, the heart of Tyrrendor, will last six months at the most. Andarna, the younger of Violet's two bonded dragons, helped power the wardstone at Basgiath and can no longer do the same for Aretia. But Andarna is the only known member of a lost breed, the irids, and she and Violet form a plan: find the rest of her kind, who may be able to save the wards and perhaps Xaden too.

Meanwhile the politics are as dangerous as the monsters. The kingdom of Navarre, its old enemy Poromiel, and the leaders of the recent revolution in Tyrrendor are trying to forge an uneasy alliance against the venin. Centuries of hatred do not vanish at a negotiating table. Dragon riders nearly riot at the presence of Poromiel's gryphon fliers, who are at a severe disadvantage because they cannot use their magic inside Navarre's wards. Violet and her friends face down the mob, and then quietly alter the wardstone so that the fliers can wield. General Aetos, the new commander at Basgiath and father of Violet's old friend Dain, calls it treason. The squad escapes serious punishment on a technicality of timing, since a pardon for the riders who deserted in the previous book takes effect just afterwards.

Sent to a border outpost, Violet and her squad rush to defend a small village from a venin attack that the garrison is too thinly staffed to answer. It is a trap laid for her. There she first meets Theophanie, a silver-haired, high-ranking venin who wields storm magic and has taken a chilling personal interest in Violet. Theophanie tries to bring her under control, then vanishes, and later reaches out to her again by letter.

Back at the college, complications pile up. Xaden is made a professor of signet-fighting, which forces him and Violet to put their relationship on hold under the Code of Conduct. Prince Halden, the king's son and Violet's former boyfriend, turns up to stir the pot. And Dain manages to get past his father's security to recover the research of Violet's late father, along with a letter addressed to her that points to a merchant on the isle of Deverelli.

The rulers of Navarre send out a search squad to find the irids, and Violet is assigned to it. After a disastrous first mission to recover a gem from an abandoned border village, the price of an audience with Deverelli's king, she is allowed to take command and rebuild the team with people she trusts. It is a gloriously awkward group: Xaden, his best friend Garrick, the wisecracking Ridoc, Dain, Xaden's former lover Cat and other gryphon fliers, and, at first, Prince Halden as Navarre's official envoy. Even her dragon Tairn has opinions about her choices.

From here the book becomes an island-hopping odyssey, and each stop sets its own test.

On Deverelli, magic itself fails. No one can wield, and only Violet can still speak with her dragons. She finds her father's writings, but Halden is detained during his audience with King Courtlyn, and when Violet and Xaden go to retrieve him, the prince's temper turns a tense meeting into a fight for their lives. Xaden slips and draws on his venin power to get them out. With Andarna's help they pressure the king into an agreement and win the right to use the isle as a base for the search.

On Unnbriel, isle of the war goddess Dunne, the prince is replaced by Aaric, a first-year rider who is secretly the king's other son. Xaden, Dain and Violet must fight the isle's finest warriors to earn an audience with its queen. Her price for an alliance is dragon eggs, and Violet refuses.

On Hedotis comes the most personal shock. Among the isle's ruling circle they find Talia, Xaden's mother, who left when he was a child. She has a new husband and two younger sons, and the discovery leaves Xaden feeling abandoned all over again. Dinner with her family turns deadly when poison is served, and the squad must scramble for an antidote and a way off the isle.

On Zehyllna, whose people worship the god of luck, the visitors must play a game of cards in which each of them draws a gift. Most are harmless or cryptic. One is not, and the squad pays dearly for it. Yet the audience that follows succeeds, and Zehyllna pledges a large army to the war.

At last, exploring the smaller isles nearby, Violet and Ridoc come face to face with the irids. They are not what Andarna has dreamed of. The irids are peaceful and deeply judgmental of humankind. They left Andarna's egg in Navarre as a test, to see whether people could change their ways, and what they see in the young warrior dragon in front of them does not please them.

The squad returns to a continent where the war has turned for the worse. The venin have advanced and stolen the alloy-hilted daggers that are the riders' best weapon against them. Poromiel has lost its queen. A new shadow wielder has appeared among the first-year riders, an ominous sign of how far Xaden has drifted. Violet is plagued by nightmares that grow more intense. Tyrrendor's decision to take in refugees from Poromiel strains its ties with the rest of Navarre. And Theophanie has not finished with the Sorrengail family. The book's final chapters, told from several points of view, bring all of this to a head in battle and close on a mystery that turns everything upside down.

What It's Really About

Underneath the dragons and the banter, this is a book about loving someone who is becoming dangerous. Xaden's slide toward the venin is framed as an addiction to power, and Violet's vow to stay with him and find a cure is both her great strength and, as one critic puts it, a weakness that matches his in risky ways. The romance has matured, too. Fans praise how the pair, knowing they are racing against time, stop sabotaging each other and try to make every moment count.

It is also about who gets let in. Wards that keep out monsters also keep out allies and refugees, and the fight over opening them gives the series its most pointed politics. Against the venin's creed of deceit and hunger for power, Yarros sets fellowship, courage and self-sacrifice. The series treats disability and difference as a matter of course: a rider with a lost leg, a deaf scribe, harnesses adapted for riders with limited mobility, and a heroine whose own body has never made things easy.

Readers love the found family, the humour, and above all the dragons, who are every bit as sarcastic as their riders. Andarna, a sulky, sharp-tongued adolescent, and Ridoc, the squad's loyal comedian, are widely named as favourites. Admirers compare the quest structure to The Odyssey, a journey whose detours all have a purpose. Critics are more divided: some miss the school setting, find the magical terminology dense and the obstacles too convenient, feel the favourite side characters are pushed into the background, and find the ending more frustrating than thrilling. Even reviewers with reservations tend to agree that it sets the stage for the final two books.

Who Should Read It

This one is for readers already invested in The Empyrean: start with Fourth Wing, because nothing here will make sense otherwise. If you love romantasy with a committed central couple, snarky dragons, a found-family squad and a quest across strange lands where every isle has its own rules, you will have a wonderful time. Expect adult content, with open-door love scenes, on-page death and gore, and a cliffhanger that leaves you waiting on book four. Readers who prefer tight, fast plots or tidy endings may find this middle chapter a test of patience.