Onyx Storm (Prelude)
Onyx Storm is a book that inspires a lot of conflicting emotions in me.
It is, in isolation, the best book in The Empyrean. Yarros addressed many of the problems of the previous books (at least partially). The narrative cannibalism of its predecessors, while not eradicated, has been dialed back to the point that it manages to tell a mostly coherent story. Passion and effort blossom in several scenes, and there are payoffs that felt genuinely fulfilling even after I reflected on how the narrative had gotten us there. Yarros goes so far to acknowledge plot holes and editing mistakes from the previous books and to try to address them.
However … this is also the book where it becomes painfully clear that Yarros lied about having the whole series “plotted out and arced and all of that” after she had finished Fourth Wing. The bulk of the narrative meanders aimlessly among power fantasy moments that do little to move the story forward. The Romance effectively ceases to exist. The climax starts strong before dissolving into incoherent nonsense, then Yarros gives up entirely on writing a sensical ending.
And that is before one considers that, as the third book in a planned five-part series, we can’t view this book in isolation. It needs to be viewed as a sequel to both Fourth Wing, Iron Flame. Seen through that lens, it becomes clear that the cannibalistic writing didn’t go away. Yarros just directed the hunger at the prior books. The retcons she introduces in this book destroy the narratives that got us to Onyx Storm.
It’s time to buckle back into our Special Snowflake dragon saddles. The storm is upon us.
STATS
Title: Onyx Storm
Series: The Empyrean (Book 3)
Author(s): Rebecca Yarros
Genre: Fantasy (Epic)
First Printing: January 2025
Publisher: Red Tower Books
SPOILER WARNING
Onyx Storm
As with the previous review series, we will be doing a book-club style review. Each part will cover a specific chapter or chapters, which will be spelled out in the part’s title. Within each part, you can expect:
Heavy, unmarked spoilers for anything through the end of that part’s chapters.
Mild, unmarked spoilers for later chapters, though these mild spoilers will not be included in the first paragraph of each section.
Heavy spoilers for later chapters, if necessary, will be isolated to clearly marked sections.
For example, the part for Chapter 8 (wherein we will discuss the pattern and destructive effect of power fantasy on this book) will feature heavy, unmarked spoilers for anything up through the end of Chapter 8 as well as mild, unmarked spoilers for elements from Chapter 9 onward. There will also be heavy spoilers from later in the book marked in the headers of the sections in which the spoilers appear.
Fourth Wing and Iron Flame
Heavy spoilers will be provided for Fourth Wing and Iron Flame throughout this review. These spoilers will not be marked. I will also assume that you are up-to-date on my full review series for both these books, which can be accessed via this archive link. (Knowledge of those prior reviews isn’t necessary, but if you get entertainment out of watching my sanity erode as I move through these books, I may spoil some of my more emotive reactions from past reviews.)
Other Stories
Throughout this series, I will be making references to multiple other works of media. These will include many spoilers, the vast majority of which will not be marked. If a work is less than 10 years old, I will try to avoid heavy spoilers or else clearly mark them, but for works older than that, I’m not going to be providing any warning unless I feel that the spoiler in question would fundamentally impact the experience of consuming that story for the first time. For example, there is a spoiler from the Season 6 finale of Doctor Who (2005) later in this post, but I’m not going to mark it, as the mere existence of every season after Season 6 is already adequate warning that the Doctor survives the finale, and the manner by which he escapes death isn’t an enormous twist.
STRUCTURE
Parts
This review series will consist of a total of 24 parts:
This prelude
22 parts for the book itself, presented as a book club-style review
A retrospective
These parts will release bi-weekly, starting tomorrow with the part for the Prologue. Given the vast scale of this project, I will not be compiling a list of links as I did for the Goblet of Fire review series Prelude. Instead, each new post will be added to the Onyx Storm archive as soon as it releases.
[NOTE: As of 03/16/2025, I am still drafting the review series, and the total number of parts keeps fluctuating as I find myself consolidating some parts or splitting others. The above figures are best estimates. Once I have finalized the series, I will edit in the correct numbers (and delete this note).]
Content Per Post
Regarding the number of chapters covered in each part, I want to do things a bit differently this time. I feel like I spent a lot of time repeating myself in those previous reviews. While that may have been informative for people just wanting to understand what is in the book, I’m not sure it was the best approach in terms of analyzing the problems.
This time, I want to select specific chapters to serve as “Spotlight” chapters. These are chapters that serve as defining examples of the recurring issues within this book. I will confine as much of the discussion of these issues as possible to these Spotlights. There will still be some discussion of these issues before or after said Spotlights, but this will be far reduced from what otherwise would have been.
For example:
Chapter 8 is where we’ll be discussing the recurring issue of power fantasy in this book.
Chapter 12 will focus on a retcon that encapsulates how readily Yarros lies to the audience and the devastating consequence of those lies on the story.
Chapters 48 and 49 will be where we discuss the handling of the Romance subplot.
These three recurring issues all pop up in Chapters 1 through 7. Rather than do breakdowns on each in the moment, we’ll put pins in them for later discussion and focus on just the most immediate issues in these chapters. This will allow us to tackle Chapters 1 through 4 in one part and Chapters 5 through 7 in another, rather than needing to slow to only one or two chapters per post.
On a related note: even more so than Part 2 of Iron Flame, I am going to be ignoring a lot of smaller issues during this review. This book features so many contradictions, so many wonky lines, and so much general nonsense that I could reasonably write a post to break down the flaws of every individual chapter. However, since I’m assuming you’ve all read the reviews for the previous books, I trust that you all understand just how laced with flaws Yarros’s prose is. We’re going to let the small stuff slide and focus on the most damaging issues.
Why I’m Doing This
To get the obvious out of the way: my analytics indicate that you all like these deep dives. I’m not inclined to do this sort of thing unless a book provides adequate cause, but since adequate cause does exist, I’m more than happy to accommodate demand.
That’s the key point, though: “adequate cause.”
I’ve given a lot of bad ratings to books on this site. I’ve given some in-depth analyses that required multiple posts. However, most of those books would not be worth the effort to analyze a few chapters at a time. For all the issues in Notorious Sorcerer and A Master of Djinn, their issues are pervasive and consistent. The rot sets in gradually. If I were to give them the same treatment I give The Empyrean, there would honestly be very little to talk about in each post. I’d probably have to do something like the Goblet of Fire review, making the review into a case study that hyper-fixates on the rot while ignoring most other aspects of the narrative.
Yarros’s writing, by contrast, is self-devouring. New issues pop up every few chapters, and issues that had previously seemed to have bottomed out or resolved keep finding ways to crawl back into focus. Not helping matters is how bloated the narrative is. I could not analyze the entire book at once and do the individual issues justice. There’s simply too much information to cover.
RATING: 1.5/10
Onyx Storm is a bad book. The plot meanders aimlessly among power fantasy moments instead of progressing through milestones; characters are retconned instead of developing; the worldbuilding contradicts itself, making the stakes unclear. The Romance subplot exposes just how little there is to Violet and Xaden’s relationship. What could have been a promising climax crashes and burns as Yarros gives up entirely.
With all of that said, though, it is the strongest book in the series. It actually works better if one has never read the previous books. There are multiple moments in this book that are only a problem or fall flat because Onyx Storm exists in continity with Fourth Wing and Iron Flame.
There are even moments within this book that work fairly well. The action, for example, has come a long way since Fourth Wing. There’s certainly plenty of nonsense in terms of confusing choreography and illogical outcomes (particularly in regards to Violet’s disability, which is supposed to be as bad as that of a woman who struggles to sit through press events), but on the whole, Yarros does a great job of immersing the audience into the thick of the action and helping us to experience the excitement with Violet (or whomever the POV happens to be).
If this book existed in isolation, I would give it a 2.5, making it the best of the series. The narrative comes so close to basic coherency that there were points that I honestly considered giving it a 3 or a 4.
Much like Iron Flame, though, Onyx Storm cannot be viewed in isolation. It’s beholden to its predecessors. As a result, every contradiction is a flaw. Every retcon that damages the plot, world, characters, themes, or anything else in a previous book is a flaw. Anything new introduced in Onyx Storm that synergizes with a previous book to open a plot hole is a flaw.
This is why I made that Twitter post about this book potentially being the first one to earn a 0.5 rating. At that point in the narrative, Onyx Storm had only succeeded in destroying the previous books without offering anything to redeem itself. The book got better from than point, but the damage had already been done.
When all that is considered, Onyx Storm is the second-worst book in the series. Fourth Wing may only surpass it because Fourth Wing did not have any prior continuity to cause issues, but given that Onyx Storm is working off momentum from that prior continuity, that difference is more than earned.
PREMISE
Courtesy of Barnes & Noble, we get:
After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty.
Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.
Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.
They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth.
But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.
I don’t have a lot to say here that I didn’t already say in my analysis of Onyx Storm’s marketing materials. In fact, the book we got represents the worst-case scenario of all my speculation in that anlysis. Yes, everything here is technically accurate, but it horrendously mishandled.
GENRE
Yarros and the publishing industry stubbornly insist that The Empyrean, including Onyx Storm, is Romantasy (a sub-genre of Fantasy for Romance stories). Having read Onyx Storm, I can confirm that it still fails to fit the sub-genre, unless we were to water down the definition of Romantasy to the point that any Fantasy story to ever feature a love interest is also a Romantasy.
The issues identified back in the Reshelf Romantasy interlude continue to apply here. As a reminder, the definition established for Romantasy within that interlude was:
Romantasy is a sub-genre where a romantic love story serves as the core of the narrative within a setting featuring fantastical or supernatural elements.
Like its predecessors, the love story of Onyx Storm does not serve as the core of the narrative. It is an additive that is, at best, driven by the actual narrative, which is an Epic Fantasy story about a war between dragon riders and energy vampires.
What’s bizarre about this is that Yarros had a strong start to make this a Romantasy. As we’ll get into tomorrow, the fact that Xaden is now a venin opens up rich opportunity for a Romance story. Violet’s emotional connection to him will drive her to attempt to save him regardless of whether doing so serves the greater good that the rest of this Epic Fantasy is geared around. It could take over as her core motivation for everything she does, especially if Yarros allowed the existential conflict against the venin to play out more slowly.
However … Yarros almost immediately abandons this. Yes, the idea of helping Xaden is repeated (ad nauseum), but it is overshadowed by the existential conflict against the venin at every turn. Most chapters and even scenes where this motivation should have been the driving force would have happened even if it did not exist, whereas the absence of the existential conflict would have either made those same scenes impossible or else required fundamental changes to keep them. The sole exceptions to this trend are the sex scenes and moments that exist purely to generate sexual tension, and those don’t drive the narrative at all.
It gets to a point where Onyx Storm is the farthest from Romantasy of any book in the series thus far. At least its predecessors made a proper effort to stitch Violet’s dynamic with Xaden into the fabric of the story and to pretend that the two of them were growing and evolving as people because of that dynamic. Here, the relationship is stagnant. It feels like an afterthought.
So unless we’re going to stretch the definition of “serves the core of the narrative” to the point that A Song of Ice and Fire, Harry Potter, How to Tame Your Dragon, the Lord of the Rings, and the Licanius Trilogy could also be considered Romantasy … Onyx Storm is just an Epic Fantasy with pornographic content and a lot of sexual tension.
TITLE
While the title of Onyx Storm makes sense, I feel is it not representative of the story being told. I can see a scenario where it would have been representative. If Yarros had gone that route, I’d even say that the title is very clever.
In Chapter 64, Xaden unleashes the full might of his venin-enhanced god-mode, and we get this description.
Shadow spreads like a ripple on a lake, devouring the field in the fury of an onyx storm and sweeping toward us at a speed that squeezes the hope from my chest, then outright shatters my heart.
If this book were truly a Romantasy, driven by Violet’s quest to save Xaden, this title would have been great. It symbolically sums up the challenge Violet faces. Unfortunately, because the Romance subplot does not drive this narrative and could be deleted outright without negatively impacting the story, naming this book after this one bit of description feels as ill-fitting as calling a book Dragons of a Fallen Sun just because it has dragons in it.
Just off the top of my head, any of of the following would be more fitting titles:
Heretic War
Iridescent Dream
Chosen’s Trials
TERMINOLOGY
In the interest of a smooth reading experience for you all, I’d like to quickly define some terminology that I will be using throughout this review.
Nicknames and Personal Labels
Signets: This one is straightforward. Yarros refers to her special magical powers granted to dragon riders as “signets” (a common noun). I change it to a proper noun for my analysis to make uses of the term stand out better. Additionally, I use Signet to refer to the abilities of gryphon fliers, despite Yarros not referring to those abilities as Signets, as the abilities of fliers are functionally the same as Signets and are treated as being the same whenever Yarros finds it convenient.
rebel children: Characters (or accessories, or faces in the Red Shirt mob) who are the children of the rebel officers in the Tyrrendor uprising six years prior to the start of the story. This includes Xaden, Imogen, Garrick, Bodhi, and many other Tyrrish characters. The text often refers to them as having “rebellion relics”, due to a magical brand all of them bear.
accessories: a blanket label for secondary characters without Violet’s personal friend group and her squad, including Rhiannon, Sawyer, Ridoc, Sloane, Aaric, etc. Accessories are so called because they exist almost entirely to accessorize Violet: to support her, to validate her, and to surround her with narratively meaningless background chatter to briefly distract her from the main events of the narrative. Their characterization is typically limited to one or two quirks; for the most part, their dialogue is interchangeable (save for dialogue linked to a specific quirk). A character may rise out of accessory status if given focus and narrative relevance or sink back into it once that relevance disappears; a good example of this is Aaric, who had narrative relevance in Part 1 of Iron Flame, sank into accessory status in Part 2 of Iron Flame, and doesn’t rise back out of accessory status until Chapter 29 of Onyx Storm. He’s still around and involved in events between those milestones, but he’s reduced to an interchangeable face in the crowd.
rainbow dragons: The seventh dragon breed, to which Andarna belongs. In Onyx Storm, this breed are given their own title, the “irids”, short for “iridescent” (something Yarros needlessly goes out of her way to explain). For the sake of consistency, I will continue to refer to irids as rainbow dragons.
Teclis: Refers to the character of Viscount Tecarus, since that is how I kept reading his name the first time though Iron Flame.
Draconis Umbridge: Refers to Vice-Commandant Varrish, given the fact that he was a cheap knockoff if Dolores Umbridge.
“rational woman”: Quoting a ridiculous moment in Chapter 3 of Iron Flame when Violet refers to herself as a “rational woman” in a moment where she is being governed solely by entitlement and emotion. Used to highlight the many, many examples where Violet is irrational without the narrative acknowledging that fact.
“intelligence”: Quoting one of the ways Violet is validated for being intelligent, and likewise used to highlight examples of Violet’s lack of intelligence.
queer: Per the precedent established by Fonda Lee in Jade City (which we have previously reviewed), all non-heterosexual behavior will be referred to by this term. Any character who exists to tokenize non-heterosexual people shall, by extension, by labeled as Token Queer. This is a label of convenience. I know “queer” is supposed to mean something very specific, but for the sake of portions of the analysis where I need to use this term, the precise sexual orientation of Yarros’s characters doesn’t change my arguments or conclusions.
Literary Terms
aftshadowing: Previously referred to as “second-draft foreshadowing”. This is how I refer to cases where Yarros made up a twist or development on the spot in her first draft (the “ass-pull twist”) and then doubled back to slap in superficial lines of setup, rather than properly redrafting and editing her work for an organic setup. Aftshadowing is foreshadowing in only the most technical sense. Yes, it provides information that is relevant to a later development, but it is clearly and afterthought, usually consisting of small and/or forgettable moments that are either brushed aside or explained away almost as soon as they appear. For example, the setup of Andarna’s camouflaging abilities amounts to three throwaway lines across the entirety of Iron Flame. All three moments are rationalized away by either the infallible conclusions of the Mary Sue or by Tairn insisting that everything is normal; all three surface only momentarily before being forgotten again, as if they were inserted after the rest of the scene was finalized.
Mary Sue: This is a term that gets used slightly differently by a lot of different people. For our purposes, a Mary Sue is a character around whom the narrative warps to ensure that she (or he - the male iteration is sometimes referred to as “Marty Sue” or “Gary Stu”) is never truly challenged by the narrative. There are multiple ways that a Mary Sue can manifest, but it typically comes down to a combination of factors that destroy any meaningful sense of stakes or tension within the story being told around her. This combination of traits may include:
Possessing extraordinary power that invalidates any external challenge.
A lack of character flaws (at least, a lack of flaws acknowledged by the narrative) that pose any sort of narrative barrier.
Constantly being presented as morally infallible, even in the case of glaring hypocrisy; any moral failings that are acknowledged are usually framed as necessary evil.
Being handed skills, abilities, powers, equipment, and other rewards that aid her in the narrative without her actually earning them.
Receiving constant external validation from other characters.
Warhammer 40K References
Given Yarros's efforts to make this setting seem gritty and mature, comparing it to a grimdark setting that does grit and mature so much better seems quite prudent.
Krieg / the Deathcorps of Kreig / Kreigs Guardsmen: Fanatical, highly disciplined, and highly skilled soldiers from the planet of Krieg. Their warrior culture is founded upon a Cult of Sacrifice that dictates that there is no sacrifice they could ever make that would be too great if it means serving the will of the God-Emperor. They are a rather interesting point of comparison for this story, since they take concepts that Yarros toys with ineffectively and manage to spin those ideas into something coherent.
The Warp: A realm of psychic energy that was corrupted by a cosmic war, spawning Chaos, including malicious entities like the dæmons and Chaos Gods. The way that venin corruption progresses is not unlike the taint of Chaos.
Khorn / Slaanesh / Nurgle: The Chaos Gods that govern bloodshed, excess (usually of the sexual variety), and disease, respectively. I use these to discuss disastrous characterization.
Exterminatus / virus warhead / virus bombing / cyclonic torpedo: Refers to the Imperium’s procedure for annihilating planets as well as the two main weapons to do so, those being the life-eater virus and torpedos that burrow into a planet’s core. I typically apply this to comment on the destruction Yarros does to her story through bad worldbuilding.
Hive cities: Mountain-sized urban megastructures housing billions of people.
Other References
Combat Wheelchair: Refers to a magic item in D&D, created by a third-party designer and briefly promoted by Wizards of the Coast back in 2020 to virtue signal about inclusivity in the game. While the stated purpose of the chair was to explain how a paraplegic character could go on adventures and effectively play any class, the chair was loaded with so many additional benefits that it made playing a paraplegic character obviously superior to a non-paraplefic one. This is brought up in mention to Violet’s dragon saddle, a tool other riders are denied (because dragons supposedly frown on such things) and that makes it possible for her to stay mounted in situations that would kill any other rider.
Red Shirt: Refers to how Star Trek: The Original Series would introduce a security or technical officer (who wore red uniforms) into an episode just to kill them, thereby establishing how dangerous a situation is without having to kill any of the core cast members. Used as a blanket label for the countless tertiary characters who get minimal characterization and then are sacrificed so that Yarros can pretend stakes exist and/or get a knee-jerk emotional reaction without killing Violet, Xaden, or an accessory. A rebel child can also be a Red Shirt. An accessory could also be a Red Shirt, though our only example of this is Nadine, and her time as an accepted member of Violet’s squad was so brief that I’m not entirely sure she can be counted as an accessory in the first place.
SPECULATION DISCLAIMER
Throughout this review, as in past reviews, I will be speculating on how and why Yarros wrote certain elements into this book. Identifying things as aftshadowing is part of this. There will also be moments where I try to make sense of baffling decisions, such as retcons or damaging worldbuilding. And, of course, there will be moments where I comment on Yarros’s dishonesty and apparent motivations for that dishonesty.
Obviously, I have no hard evidence that any of my speculation is accurate. I don’t know Yarros personally, I don’t correspond with anyone who’s familiar with her, and I don’t have access to either unpublished drafts or any correspondence with her editor. These are rationalizations by which I try to understand how Yarros could have made the writing decisions that she does. You shouldn’t take my word on these things as gospel, nor will I insist that you have the same interpretation of her choices.
That being said, after reading Onyx Storm, I feel very comfortable with both continuing to speculate and sharing my speculations with you all. At least twice during this book, speculations made during the reviews of its predecessors played out with startling accuracy. Yarros has demonstrated herself to be incredibly predictable as a writer.
INSIDE THE COVER
Now, let’s quickly go after the various elements that are included between the front cover of Onyx Storm and the start of the Prologue.
Dedication
To the ones who don’t run with the popular crowd, the ones who get caught reading under their desks, the ones who feel like they never get invited, included, or represented.
Get your leathers. We have dragons to ride.
This is … performative.
As we'll get into at the end of this post, Yarros’s behavior shows a clear pattern of her saying whatever she thinks will earn her the most sympathy. This dedication is a perfect example of just that. She plays of people’s sense of isolation and victimhood here. She also plays the Representation card, despite the fact that she turns off the things that make Violet into EDS (and now POTS) representation whenever they inconvenience her narrative.
I find it rather telling that Yarros does not mention the dragon saddle. It’s almost as if requiring a Combat Wheelchair undermines the idea that someone with her condition could be Represented in this specific story.
Content / Trigger Warning
The trigger warning inside Onyx Storm is slightly different from the one listed on Yarros’s website back when I analyzed the marketing materials. This makes some sense, since that warning was copy-pasted from Fourth Wing, so Yarros has had time to get feedback on additional triggers. Below is the content warning from the book, with the new items bolded.
Onyx Storm is a nonstop-thrilling adventure fantasy set in the brutal and competitive world of a military college for dragon riders, which includes elements regarding war, hand-to-hand combat, blood, intense violence, brutal injuries, gore, murder, death, animal death, injury rehabilitation, grief, poisoning, burning, perilous situations, graphic language, and sexual activities that are shown on the page. Readers who may be sensitive to these elements, please take note, and prepare to face the storm…
Let’s put this in practical terms.
Everything Associated with Violence and Death
This is a power fantasy. Everything connected to violence is either weightless, so as not to distract from how awesome Yarros’s self-insert Mary Sue is, or else is so overwrought as to bypass being impactful and loop right around to being laughable. I could see this being a problem for someone with severe trauma triggered by the mere mention of violence, both otherwise, Yarros is overselling this.
The “animal death” is particularly noteworthy here. A trio of tamed panthers are unleashed on Violet and Xaden, and they defend themselves. This isn’t animal cruelty. If anything, Yarros has failed to acknowledge the trauma of those attacked by animals. (Also, within the scene itself, Violet threatens to kill a helpless panther as a means to extort a man who treasures these animals. This is never condemned, and it is even framed as a moment of Violet showing off how powerful and diplomatic she is. The trigger warning, as it is written, neither prepares the audience for the psychological horror of having this done to pet nor negates the fact that Yarros frames this as a good thing.)
Graphic Language
Some of my students between the ages of 7 and 10 think it is funny to drop F-bombs and give people the middle finger. I highly doubt they know what either of these things actually mean; they probably picked it up from American movies.
These elementary students come off as more mature than the swearing in this book.
Sadly, things have not improved from previous entries. Yarros just vomits up swear words at every turn. I originally thought she had dialed things back, only to do a word search and discover that I’d simply become desensitized to the deluge of profanity.
Grief
This is confined to one scene and then forgotten. If anything, the warning should have been that readers would see grief trivialized as being less detrimental than the cold I caught over winter break.
Sexual Activities Pornography Shown on the Page
There are three scenes of pornography (two of which consume entire chapters) plus one scene of fade-to-black sex. Showing this pornography does not serve any purpose for the narrative. In the case of the two full-chapter sex scenes, not even the objective fact of sex occurring is narratively relevant.
As mentioned in the analysis of the ELLE.com article, Yarros wrote these scenes with the intent to arouse. We also know she knows that they are excessive, as she tried to gaslight her critics with a damning comparison to her handling of murder rather than mount an actual defense.
What I neglected to mention previously is that someone has tried to defend Yarros’s pornography as not being vulgar. From the Vulture article:
Gayle King suggested that married people should read Variation together. “It’s so sensual and so steamy without being vulgar. And I marvel that you were able to do that,” she said on CBS Mornings. “I’m thinking you and your husband are having very good sex, if I may say.”
Now, it’s possible that King was only referring to Variation, not The Empyrean, but given the pattern on display in The Empyrean’s sex scenes, I’m willing to bet that Yarros is aroused by vulgarity.
I found all of the on-page pornography in Onyx Storm with one word search. One singular word search for a vulgar shorthand term regarding part of a woman’s anatomy was all it took. This same word search flagged all of the sex scenes in Iron Flame. I figured out which word to use because it popped up in the first sex scene in Fourth Wing.
And since Yarros uses that vulgarity to spice up all these sex scenes … vulgarity is an intentional part of this book’s pornographic appeal.
I’m going to touch upon the sex scenes when we discuss the mishandled Romance subplot later on. For now, I will reiterate that Yarros is the most disgusting author I have ever encountered in the mainstream. You can tell she was using only one hand when she typed these scenes.
If you are reading along with this review, the on-page pornography is in Chapter 3, Chapter 25, and Chapter 49. You have been warned.
Dramatis Personae
One new element that Yarros includes in this book is a list of characters at the start. For characters who are dragon riders or gryphon fliers, she lists the name of the dragon / gryphon associated with the character (if named) and the character's Signet (if any). Characters who aren’t riders / fliers or who lack a named mount instead get brief descriptions of the role they play.
In concept, I like this idea. It can be a useful reference. The Star Wars EU did this for many of its novels, especially in the Legacy era. The dramatis personaes in those books would give a character name, the character’s species and sex, and a short description of what position the character holds, such as “Luke Skywalker (Human male, Jedi Grand Master)”. Here, it’s a handy way to keep track of all the dragons and Signet powers.
Too bad character bloat makes it useless.
The reason the dramatis personae worked in the Star Wars EU is that those books took time to flesh out characters. Yes, they could have large casts, but the characters who drove the narrative all had motivations, dynamics, and histories that were clearly established. We didn't need the list to remind us who Jacen Solo, Alema Rar, and Cha Niathal were; we just needed a nudge to remind us that, despite all of these characters acting human, one was a squid person and another had head-tails.
Here, Yarros has a vast number of interchangeable characters to whom she parcels out lines to as needed. The ones with narrative relevance always have it in very utilitarian ways, and they blend back into the interchangeable mob when not serving that purpose. For every character on this list, there's at least one that isn't, and many of the ones that aren’t on the list have greater narrative relevance than the ones that do.
I do feel that character bloat is less of an issue in this book than the previous two. It's just that it is still a problem, and this dramatis personae does nothing to address it. I wonder if Yarros just saw a dramatis personae in another book and thought it would be cool to add it to her own work, with no thought to making it useful.
Framing
This book utilizes the same framing device, word-for-word, as the previous two.
The following text has been faithfully transcribed from Navarrian into the modern language by Jesinia Neilwart, Curator of the Scribe Quadrant at Basgiath War College. All events are true, and names have been preserved to honor the courage of those fallen. May their souls be commended to Malek.
My thoughts on this have not changed since the Iron Flame prelude. It’s also still funny to think that either Violet wrote her sex diary into a historical record or else dictated said sex diary directly to Jesinia without Jesinia stopping her to question the relevance. However, I do want to elaborate on what this framing device means for the narrative voice of the story.
In past reviews, I have commented upon how the narrative voice aggressively clashes with the reality of the setting. Violet and her friends think and act like modern American university students despite living in a brutal setting that should be molding them into the something more akin to Kreig Guardsmen. The only think close to an explanation that I’ve seen for this from Yarros was a line in an interview that was later re-quoted by an article from Vulture on January 17th.
Both Fourth Wing and its sequel Iron Flame are preceded by a note that says the contents have been “faithfully transcribed” from the fantasy language Navarrian into “modern language.” Yarros explained on the Professional Book Nerds podcast that she wanted her writing to be as accessible as possible. “My goal is to bring non-fantasy readers into fantasy,” she said. “So we made the vernacular more modern and more approachable.”
This doesn’t justify the disconnect. Frankly, it doesn't even explain the quality of the prose. Christopher Paolini’s work is proof that you can make Fantasy prose accessible to non-Fantasy readers without making all the characters sound disconnected from the world in which they live. It seems far more likely that Yarros simply couldn’t get into the necessary headspace to write an immersive Fanatasy narrative in a secondary world and made up an excuse to cover up for her failure (something we will see again very soon).
All that being said, I don’t think that the narrative voice is as big of an issue as in the previous two books, thanks to three major changes.
A substantial portion of this book occurs outside of the confines of Basgiath. Even the scenes within Basgiath mostly give up on the magical school premise in favor of focusing on the venin threat. This effectively removes the framework of a brutal military academy in a world defined by endless war. Yes, the school is still there, and Yarros uses it to force the story in certain directions, but it no longer feels like we’re experiencing the story through that lens. This feels like more of a generic Fantasy adventure that just idles at a school sometimes.
Yarros drops the Trust conflict that she dragged the Romance subplot through at the end of Fourth Wing and across Iron Flame.
While there is still some focus given to disability accomodations (in situations where such accomodations would be unfair to everyone else at best and a liability at worst), it is far less prevalent.
These may seem like small things, but by making these changes, Yarros eliminated most of the factors that clash with the narrative voice. Violet reads far more believably now than in previous books because we are not actively being asked to accept that a “rational woman” applauded for her “intelligence” would think or act in a manner that is fundamentally at odds with her history or present situation.
That’s not to say that the narrative voice is perfect. Still, the missteps are small enough that I can narrow them down to specific errors in character writing. I don’t think the voice as a whole is a problem in this book.
AUTHOR
I have maintained and continue to maintain that we should separate art from the artist. Even if a story is a blatant power fantasy with a self-insert Mary Sue, even if it features the loudest and laziest virtue signaling imaginable, a work of fiction should not be used as the sole point of evidence for judging the true character of the author.
With that being said, Rebecca Yarros has waived the privilege to be separated from her work.
Dishonesty
Yarros is, in simplest terms, a habitual liar when it comes to interaction with her audience. She lies to her readers both within the narrative of her books and in interviews.
To be clear, there are many ways to provide an audience with false information.
A mislead presents the audience with information that is not objectively true but which is fully justified by some truth within the story, such as a character with an established information to present or believe the false information. An example of this can be found in Ocean’s Eleven, wherein the heist relies upon multiple deceptions, with the audience seeing some of these deceptions from the outside before being shown what was actually going on.
Withholding information happens when a POV character is fully aware of the piece of information, yet said information is denied to the audience purely for dramatic effect. An example of this is the faking of the Eleventh Doctor’s death in the Season 6 finale of Doctor Who (the reboot). A scene where he meets with the Teselecta is deliberately cut mere seconds before he has the lightbulb moment that saves his life, with the missing footage behind shown to us in the climax of the episode.
A mystery will often feature red herrings designed to distract the audience and keep them from figuring out the answer to the mystery too quickly. For example, Goblet of Fire aggressively pushes Ludo Bagman as a potential suspect for having put Harry’s name in the Goblet before explaining away his suspicious behavior after the truth is revealed.
Sometimes, an author can provide false information to the audience accidentally through poor writing. This can happen while attempting any of the above three pathways.
A lie, by contrast, is when an author presents objectively false information and then fails to justify it. This is what Yarros did repeatedly throughout Iron Flame.
She would gaslight the audience to try to get us to ignore critical information before flipping on a dime and using that same critical information to drive her narrative.
She would assert that a twist was justified by referencing prior scenes that were very clearly written without the twist in mind.
She would have Violet assert something as absolute truth, then change the narrative without acknowledging that Violet was wrong, sometimes skimming past the fact Violet was wrong with a joke or a quick absolution and other times projecting blame for Violet’s failure onto another character lying.
This behavior extends beyond the books to Yarros’s publicity. The most glaring example of this is the following assertion from a June 2023 interview with TODAY.com , where she claimed that:
The books are fully potted for five books. The whole series is plotted out and arced and all of that.
The meandering narrative and ludicrous retcons of Onyx Storm are enough, in and of itself, to prove that this is false, as are the many ridiculous and plot-hole opening twists of Iron Flame.
The long and short of it is, Yarros has lied to her audience so flagrantly, so willfully, and so many times that it is impossible to give her the benefit of the doubt. There are moments in Onyx Storm where she does try her hand at misleads and withholding information and mysteries. There are moments when she simply presents false information through bad writing. However, there are also moment where Yarros outright lies to either force a certain interpretation of events or to try to pretend that a mistake she made was intentional. I will not not automatically assume that these are mistakes when they pop up. I will be assuming malice and calling it out accordingly. (We’ll get into this more when we get to Chapter 12.)
A Hollow Shell of Virtue
Yarros will freely virtue signal, both in her text and in social media, about whatever cause will gain her the most popularity, whilst simultaneously doing the least work possible to do that.
This was most blatant in her tokenization of characters. Whether it’s race, disability, gender, or sexuality, the previous two books were crammed full of illogical and lazy Representation that destroyed immersion by calling attention to itself and sometimes actively clashed with the setting. The tokenization is less notable in Onyx Storm, but the tokens that are noteworthy have become such sickening stereotypes that it makes me seriously consider that Yarros may actually be prejudiced against the people she’s tokenizing. (We’ll also get into this in Chapter 12.)
Then there’s the controversy referenced in the Vulture article from January 17th. Her response to backlash over Fourth Wing being translated into Hebrew for distribution in Israel was to start playing victim cards, invoking her grandfather’s status as Holocaust survivor and then implying that not translating her book would constitute book banning. She also was quick to acknowledge herself as a “white, privileged voice” whilst simultaneously asking people to ignore this inherent characteristic about her (which is rather ironic, given that tokenization is about trying to get noticed for using people’s inherent characteristics).
We mustn’t forget how Yarros loves to milk Violet as Representation for women the EDS (and now POTSnas well). However, she does this while simultaneously describing how severe her condition is (such as was the case in her January 15th interview with ELLE.com). The simple fact of the matter is, Violet’s condition is nowhere near as severe as what Yarros describes. Furthermore, in KrimsonRogue’s review of Iron Flame, he consulted multiple women with EDS (including one who had training in martial arts), and they seemed to be mostly in agreement on how absurd the things Violet does in these books are, at least for someone with Violet’s specific background.
The long and short of it is, Yarros talks big about Representation because it is popular, but she does not follow through on it.
What really stands out to me, though, is the first paragraph from the acknowledgements of Fourth Wing.
First and foremost, thank you to my Heavenly Father for blessing me beyond my wildest dreams.
You know who doesn’t get mentioned in the acknowledgements of either Iron Flame or Onyx Storm? That same Heavenly Father.
It’s not impossible that Yarros renounced her faith or simply became very lax in the months between Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. Frankly, given some odd lines sprinkling throughout this text, I think we can’t rule the former out. However, given all the other virtue signaling, given all the dishonesty to her audience, I think the far more likely answer is that she only thanked God in that first book because she thought doing so would make her look virtuous. When it didn’t get the results she wanted, she removed it.
The Wretchedness Within
In her January 15th interview with ELLE.com, Yarros said that she likes Romance because:
“Romance is this beautiful place where women get to say on the page what we want, what we deserve, what healthy relationships should look like. [It’s about] destigmatizing what a woman feels she’s worth.”
Yarros considers this series to be a Romance. She believes that Violet’s narcissism, entitlement, abusive behaviors, spite, and generally horrific qualities are “destigmatizing.” On top of this, Violet is a self-insert Mary Sue onto whom Yarros has mapped her own disability, acting out a series of power fantasies with discernable patterns that align to things Yarros has revealed about her own life.
Even if Violet is not literally thinking and acting as Yarros would in any given situation, Yarros believes Violet is in the right and should be celebrated by mere virtue of being a woman in a story she considers to be a Romance. She is putting her support behind Violet. She is telling us that what Violet does should be destigmatized, thereby backing up Violet’s morality with whatever credibility she might personally possess.
Therefore, I will honor Yarros’s desire. Whenever Violet does something morally abhorrent that is either not condemned or outright rewarded by the narrative, I will credit Yarros for declaring that this is behavior that “deserves” to be “destigmatized”. This includes, but is not limited to:
Threats of violence against anyone who speaks out against her position on issues.
Risking the annihilation of millions of people and the instigation of a refugee crisis so she doesn’t need to break a promise, despite there being alternative means to keep that promise.
Keeping secret vital strategic information that affects the lives of those same millions of people, thereby making herself a moral hypocrite and destroying Yarros’s stated theme for the series.
Extorting a man by threatening to feed his pet (which is incapacitated and helpless) to her dragons. (Yes, as covered above, there’s more context to this, but as we’ll get to when we reach the relevant chapters, that context ceases to be relevant by the time Violet issues the threat.)
Extorting another man by poisoning his wife and threatening to burn his two pre-adolescent children alive (an act that she premediated, without provocation).
Final Thoughts on the Author
What Yarros may or may not be in real life has no bearing on the quality of Onyx Storm. This book lives and dies on the basic of its own attributes. It is a terrible book, and no matter what sort of person Yarros is, her personal character cannot change that fact.
Instead, understanding the author can provide insight into what she wrote, especially in the case of a self-insert power fantasy. We can see where the author’s personal obsessions or insecurities bleed into the text. We can recognize copy-pasted elements from her life. Most importantly, we can understand how and why the story was damaged to accommodate these things.
With regards to this review, I don’t care if Yarros is a saint or a psychopath. My thoughts on this book are the same. However, after everything Yarros has done, after everything she has willfully exposed about herself, I will no longer hesitate to call her out directly. She had her grace period. She chose to speed-run out of it.
A MOMENT OF OPTIMISM
Tomorrow, the review of Onyx Storm properly begins with a breakdown of the Prologue.
In terms of content, not much happens in this prologue. It is effectively an extension of Chapter 66 of Iron Flame, one which Yarros uses to force-feed retons to the audience. One of these retcons is a blatant lie that Yarros uses to pretend that one of her plot holes was planned. There are also contradictions that make Chapter 66 of Iron Flame make a lot less sense.
And yet … I felt genuine optimism at the end of this prologue.
If Yarros had stopped the retcons after this prologue … if she took what she set up in this prologue and ran with it … Onyx Storm could have been great. Not only could it have been great, but it might even have retroactively redeemed its predecessors. All Yarros had to do was commit to the changes she’d made and launch the story in this bold new direction.
That’s not what happened, but for a moment, I did believe it possible.
We’ll get into it more tomorrow. I hope you’ll all join me on this journey. Please remember to subscribe for the newsletter if you’d like to receive weekly updates with the latest posts. Until then, have a good day.
