Onyx Storm (Prologue)
STATS
Title: Onyx Storm
Series: The Empyrean (Book 3)
Author(s): Rebecca Yarros
Genre: Fantasy (Epic)
First Printing: January 2025
Publisher: Red Tower Books
Rating: 1.5 / 10
SPOILER WARNING
Heavy spoilers will be provided for the entirety of The Empyrean up through the end of the content covered in this part. Mild spoilers for elements later in Onyx Storm may be provided, but I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers from later in Onyx Storm will be confined to clearly labelled sections.
EPIGRAPH
Before the Prologue itself can even start, Yarros opens a plot hole.
Securing Basgiath and the wards has come at great cost, including General Sorrengail’s life. Strategy must adjust. It is in the realm’s best interest to ally with Poromiel, even temporarily.
—Recovered Correspondence Of General Augustine Melgren To His Majesty King Tauri
This is the first moment where Onyx Storm demonstrates that it is better off without its predecessors. The plot hole here only exists because Onyx Storm is the sequel of Iron Flame.
All things considered, Navarre is no worse off after the climax of Iron Flame than is was before. They had a fully functional set of wards before; they have them again. This means no wyvern, and it means the venin are reduced to a threat level that has been successfully managed for centuries (though believe me, I’m going to have questions on that before the end of Chapter 2). Yes, General Sorrengail is dead, but she was assigned to an administrative post. They clearly did not need her on the front lines, despite the power of her Signet. (Again, more on that later.) On top of that, the wards only fell because Violet undermined Melgren’s precognitive abilities, thereby making the wardstone vulnerable. The wards only fell, and General Sorrengail only died, because rebel children demonstrated why the Codex regulations against their assembly were 100% valid.
The reason I am zeroing in on this is a matter of character. From Melgren’s perspective, he has no reason to make this argument. If anything, he has every reason to double down, blaming everything bad that has happened on the Aretia riders.
It’s clear the Melgren is breaking character here because Yarros wants to force the series in a new direction. The sad thing is, she didn't need to have him break character to support a temporary alliance with Poromiel. We will later learn that Yarros has given Tyrrendor (and thus Xaden) a ridiculous among of leverage on the rest of Navarre. This opens other plot holes (which we will get to later), but it could have been used to justify this epigraph. For example, Melgren could have instead presented an argument like this.
Allying with Poromiel, at least temporarily, is a necessary evil. The House of Lewellen has threatened to sever the Talladium supply lines if the traitors in Aretia are not pardoned and reintegrated into our forces, and said traitors will not accept reintegration without concessions made to Poromiel. Until we can wrestle back control of the mines, cooperation is our best hope for survival.
STORY
The events of Chapter 66 of Iron Flame play out from Violet’s POV. She follows Xaden through Basgiath, observing the aftermath and drunken revelry in the wake of the battle from the last book. After using an emotional plea to goad the guards at Jack's cell into letting her pass, she is able to eavesdrop on the portion of Jack and Xaden’s conversation that follows the past line of Iron Flame.
As these events are proceeding, Violet converses with Andarna. They discuss Andarna’s desire to learn about her origins, her killing a venin at the opening of Chapter 63 if Iron Flame, and how they might cure Xaden of being a venin. Violet resolves to keep the secret of both Andarna’s ability to kill venin and Xaden being a venin. The Prologue ends with Violet deciding to execute some plan that is not explained to the audience, outside of her needing Imogen for it.
PLOT
Prologue
This is the first book in The Empyrean to open with a Prologue. While it is not separated from the main plot by a change of place (Chapter 1 opens at Basgiath) or time (there is only a two-week timeskip between the Prologue and Chapter 1, which is a smaller timeskip than a lot of the ones we got in Fourth Wing), I do feel that this is a very appropriate use of a prologue in a story.
This is effectively Chapter 67 of Iron Flame. It is not starting Onyx Storm; it is attempting to tie up loose ends from the previous book. For better and for worst (we will get to both), it is Yarros’s effort to make a few last-minute changes to address incompatibilities between the end of the published version of Iron Flame and the story she wanted to write in Onyx Storm.
Retcons
The retcons made in this chapter are difficult to analyze, at least on the first read.
Some of them are very minor contradictions that I don't understand why Yarros bothered to make. For example, in Iron Flame, we are explicitly told that Xaden used his Signet to sneak past one drowsy guard to see Jack, with the implication being that it was too dark to see him. However, in this version of events, there are two guards, they are conscious enough for Violet to hold a conversation with them, and the corridors are lit by mage lights, meaning that the guards should have noticed the approach of Xaden's shadow bubble (especially since we are told Violet can see it). It comes across as if Yarros didn’t reread her own work.
Then there is the retcon about Andarna wanting to know more about her origins. There was nothing about this in Iron Flame. Given how little time has passed since the events of Iron Flame, this motivation has not have time to develop; it must have already existed during the events of the previous book. After all, Andarna knew she was special all along. It’s not like the fact that she is not a black dragon was a revelation for her. Yarros clearly needs this motivation to be in place to drive the plot of Onyx Storm. Rather than giving it time to develop naturally (such as after, say, a two-week timeskip in the wake of a battle where Andarna being a rainbow dragon was a decisive factor), she’s just crowbarring it in here.
Those are small potatoes, though. The real problem is Yarros’s attempt to fill in plot holes.
Throughout this book, there are multiple instances where Yarros will directly acknowledge a plot hole from Fourth Wing or Iron Flame and try to patch it with retcons. A few if these retcons - the smallest ones - work okay. Unfortunately, there are a few where it's clear that Yarros didn’t just make a plot hole. She, as the author, made a mistake that she knows should have been caught in the editing process.
Yarros doesn't need to admit to these mistakes. It’s hard to do that organically within the body of a fictional narrative. What she needed to do was just role with the punches. She needed to take the new status quo and run with it.
However, as we will cover when the power fantasy really starts to engage, one of the things Yarros prides herself (or, at least, wants to be validiated for) is her intelligence. She couldn’t help but go back and try to explain how Violet, her self-insert Mary Sue, the “rational woman” chosen by Tairn for her “intelligence”, did not notice reality fracturing under the weight of the mistakes in question. She had to assure us that everything was totally planned out from the beginning, that the mistake was deliberate - that she, Rebecca Yarros, did not make a mistake.
In doing so, she lies to the audience and ultimately ends up assassinating the intelligence of that same self-insert Mary Sue.
Acknowledging the Issue of Andarna Killing Venin
“I scorched the venin during the battle,” [Andarna] interrupts in a rush of words that run together.
“You…did.” My brow puckers as I spiral downward toward the interrogation cells. I’d been too shocked at her appearance, the way her scales had shifted, to think about the burning dark wielder. As far as I know, we’ve never caught one on fire. Tairn hadn’t said anything, either.
Yarros tries to make an excuse for why her self-insert Mary Sue didn’t notice the blatant contradiction of everything she understood about dragons and venin … and that excuse directly contradicts what she wrote when Andarna killed the venin.
The following is what was written in Chapter 63 of Iron Flame. (I have bolded the text that was italicized in the book.)
The dark wielder turns, but he isn’t fast enough.
Andarna lands directly in front of him, then opens her mouth and breathes fire down upon him, roasting the dark wielder before she snaps her jaws down and rips hishead straight off his body.
I fall into the melting slush at the same time his corpse does, and she spits outthe decapitated, smoking head, then huffs a hot breath of sulfur-laced steam.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
“You…” I scramble to my feet and stumble toward her. “You just…”
“I breathe fire.” She preens, flaring her wings.
“Did you just eat him?” Cat stands but keeps her distance.
“You do not speak to dragons you do not ride, human.” Andarna snaps her teeth in Cat’s direction.
“You looked like a part of the cliff.” I stare at Andarna like I’ve never seen her before. Maybe I never have.
“I told you I could hide.” She blinks at me.
I open my mouth, then shut it, searching for words where there are none. That wasn’t hiding. Her scales are as black as Tairn’s now. Maybe I’m seeing things?
Violet fully registered the fact that Andarna killed a venin with fire before turning her attention to Andarna’s camouflage powers. Emphasis was put on Andarna breathing fire. The mangled remains of the venin were described, meaning that Violet registered the death. She was even aware enough of things other than the camouflage to notice Cat pointing out what Andarna did.
Remember, Violet is meant to be this hyper-intelligent, hyper-observant person who always jumps to correct conclusions, no matter how little evidence she has. One of the power fantasy moments later in this book has her identify a poison and figure out its antidote while under immense pressure and limited time. To suggest that she would be distracted from something so world-shattering by a parlor trick is an assassination of her character.
Violet didn’t miss this. Yarros did. She had Violet brush off the venin death and focus on the camouflage because she, as the author, did not see the problem, and thus her Mary Sue jumped to the conclusion that it was not a problem. Now she has realized her mistake and is trying to backpedal without admitting to her failure.
I think what bothers me most about this is the line about Tairn. Yarros is trying to protect the intellgience of her self-insert Mary Sue (and thus, herself) by saying, “Well, this other character whom I also have full control over didn’t notice anything wrong, either,” as if Tairn somehow had the power to call Yarros out on bad editing.
The Pattern
On a first read, I told myself that this retconned acknowledgement was not a lie. It was a glaring contradiction that insults the audience's intelligence, but that’s not the same thing as malicious deception. Yarros contradicts herself plenty of times without lying outright.
However, there are two other points in this book where Yarros goes out of her way to address a mistake while preserving Violet’s intelligence. One is minor. The other, however, shatters the worldbuilding yet again, destroying one of the twists from Iron Flame in the process. Yarros breaks her story in her attempt to pretend that she planned out everything form the start … to correct an editing mistake. Not even a meaningful plot hole. Just an insignificant, easily forgotten paragraph buried in the utter chaos of Fourth Wing’s climax.
We’ll get into that lie in Chapter 12. For now, I’ll just say that with the added context of that lie, the true intent of what Yarros has done here in the Prologue becomes a lot more clear. Yarros isn’t interested in repairing the narrative. She just wants to save face, even if the narrative is sacrificed in the process.
Romance
The emphasis on curing Xaden of being a venin is a promising start for a Romance subplot. If handled correctly, it could even transform this series into a proper Romantasy.
Violet knows what she should do to Xaden. He has become the enemy. He has taken the first steps becoming a “soulless” monster (more on that shortly). He has started to slide down a slippery slope, and because of his power level, he could doom them all. He needs to be killed while that option is still on the table.
However, Violet refuses to accept this. She is prepared to do whatever she has to save Xaden. She is now driven to find Andarna’s people not just because they could help Andarna, not just because they may have the power to kill venin, but because it is her only hope to find a cure.
This is a motivation that could become the core of the narrative. This is how one takes a Romance and makes it the driving force within a Fantasy epic. There is so much potential here.
…
Yarros will squander that potential in short order.
CHARACTERS
Outside of the assassination of Melgren in the epigraph and the sudden appearance of Andarna’s new motivation, there’s not really anything to discuss here in terms of characters. Everyone is otherwise acting exactly as we’ve been told to expect them to act.
WORLDBUILDING
Rainbow Dragon Powers
We get the following from Andarna after the acknowledgment of her killing a venin.
“I’ve been thinking about it all night. Magic feels different when I change color. Maybe my use of power in that moment altered the venin, weakened her enough to blister.” Andarna slows enough to enunciate her words, but not by much.
We also get this when Violet makes her resolution to save Xaden.
“We’ll find a cure,” Andarna promises. “We will exhaust every closer resource first, but if I’m right and I somehow alteredthat venin inadvertently while changing my scales, then the rest of my kind shouldknow how to master the tactic. How to change him. Cure him.”
I feel like this is very haphazard lore. It also doesn’t get explored or elaborated upon in the entire rest of the book. Still, it doesn't contradict anything previously established, and I don’t recall it being contradicted by anything that comes later (though it does synergize with something in Chapter 1 to open a plot hole).
Why Bother With Rules?
“Every possible path may require breaking a few laws.”
“Dragons do not answer to the laws of humans,” she counters in a tone that reminds me of Tairn. “And as my bonded, as Tairn’s rider, you no longer answer to them, either.”
“Rebellious adolescent,” I mutter, forming half a dozen plans, half of which might work. Even as their rider, there are still some crimes that would demand my execution…and that of whomever I trust to involve. I nod to myself, accepting the risk, at least for myself.
This is a contradictory statement that embodies the way the Yarros will toggle consequences throughout this book. Rules, whatever they may be, are a looming threat used to drive up a sense of stakes and tension … until Violet would actually face consequences, at which point something will pop up to put her above the rules. She is simultaneously above human laws and under them, and Yarros simply flips things as needed to suit her needs.
Also, this statement makes the Empyrean (the dragon council, not the series) feel rather limp. Weren’t we told in Iron Flame that the Empyrean requires all bonded dragons to submit to the human hierarchy of the rider leadership? Seems like that would invalidate the idea of riders being about the laws because their dragons are.
Religious Worldbuilding
Throughout this book, Yarros is going to dabble in developing the religious aspects of her setting. This is another thing that is nice in concept but lacking in execution. We’re going to get a very surface-level portrayal of the followers of different gods without every understanding the deeper why of things, both in terms of theology and the interaction of the divine with the physical.
This problem starts here in the Prologue with a couple of lines that sound metaphorical on a first read but that later passages will reveal to be very literal.
“He isn’t a soulless venin. He’s still Xaden. My Xaden,” I snap, holding tight to the only thing I’m certain of as I make my way silently down the stairs.
“You know what channeling from the earth does,” she warns.
Know? Yes. Accept? Absolutely not. “If he’d completely lost himself, he would have drained me at any number of points tonight, especially while I slept. Instead, he ensured our safety and risked exposure to sit at my side for hours. He channeled from the earth once. Surely we can repair wherever his soul may have…cracked.” It’s the most I’m willing to admit. “I already know what Tairn thinks, and the possibility of fighting both of you is exhausting, so please, for the love of Amari, be on my side.”
What does “soulless” actually mean in this setting?
A quick search for this word yields three hits across the entire series prior to this point. One, in Chapter 35 of Iron Flame, is used to describe Draconis Umbridge, but until he is confirmed as a venin, this one can be ignored. The other two describe venin.
In Chapter 36 of Fourth Wing, we get:
He’s more terrifying than any illustrator could have depicted, rivers of red veins fanning in every direction around soulless eyes consumed by magic.
Then, in the epigraph for Chapter 46 of Iron Flame, we get:
It is somewhat fitting that the only weapon capable of killing a dark wielder is the same thing that drove them to soullessness … power.
I mistook both of these lines uses of the term for metaphor before, but given the emphasis put on venin souls in this book, I now have to accept these as literal.
So: what does soullessness actually mean in this world? For that matter, what does a “soul” constitute?
We don’t need a deep, theological answer for this. We just need enough to grasp why this is relevant to the magic system.
In Harry Potter, souls are brought up in reference to both the Dementor’s Kiss and to Horcruxes. We know that removing the soul via Kiss doesn’t kill the victim, merely reducing them to an effectively vegetative state; we know that anchoring a piece of one’s soul to an external anchor prevents one from passing on when the body dies. That’s all we have to go on, yet that is also all we need. The most important thing we need to know for the story to work is that souls are a quantity of energy that is linked to a person’s life. When a soul is lost entirely, it erases a person's self; when it is diminshed by being split multiple times, the affected person becomes physically warped.
In Warhammer 40K, the soul is not a spiritually entity so much as a psychic one (much in the same way that dæmons and gods are psychic entities) through which a mortal is connected to the Warp. This is a simple idea that allows souls to interact with many different aspects of the world. There are weapons that damage souls by attacking this connection to the Warp; dæmons and gods devour souls by consuming this psychic energy; souls dissipate after death (unless you’re an Eldar, in which case, Slaanesh devours that energy) unless tethed to a suitable vessel (like the Eldar soul stones). This explanation also allows soullessness to exist in varying degrees. Blanks are “soullnes” because they have no connection to the Warp; species like the Tau are practically soulless because their connection to the Warp is so weak.
What we’re given in The Empyrean, by contrast to both of these examples, isn’t enough. The only lore we have on souls prior to this point is that Malek shelters souls, with those he rejects being consigned to oblivion. So what does it mean if a soul is damaged? Why does channeling magic power (instead of through a magical creature) damage the soul? Are there any other ways to damage the soul? None of this mattered when souls were simply a matter of faith and metaphor, but if it is going to exist as a quantifiable thing that can be damaged and lost, we need a framework to understand what is and isn’t possible with regards to souls.
And all of this is before the gods get properly involved. Believe me, we will be talking about that down the line.
THEMES
Violet being a hypocrite is nothing new at this point. However, in this book, the manner in which she becomes a hypocrite eats away at the very theme that Yarros claims to be at the core of her narrative.
In the previous two books, the rider leadership was evil because they kept the secret of the venin crisis. Their refusal to tell everyone in Navarre the truth is framed as cowardice and selfishness. This, coupled with Violet’s demand for full disclosure from Xaden, paints a few clear thematic idea. Information must be shared. People cannot be allowed to warp the truth by withholding the facts.
Despite fighting for this theme, Violet has already gone against it.
She kept Andarna’s nature as a juvenile and her powers as a feathertail a secret. This is rationalized by this vague and oft-contradicted threat that the rider leadership might somehow exploit feathertails.
She risked the annihilation of Aretia for a full week by concealing the fact that she could raise the wards. This was done to make her squad mates feel valued, despite the fact that she already had a convenient tool (the maorsite) to ensure they would still be valued even after the wards were raised.
These moments of hypocrisy were terribly written, but I would not say they broke the themes. They broke plot, characters, and world, but Violet didn't have any reason to believe that she was risking harm to anyone by keeping them. Even in the case of Aretia, Violet at least thought that she had time to stall, and she rushed to raise the wards the moment she was proven wrong. (This doesn’t let her off the hook for her moral hypocrisy, just thematic hypocrisy.). Her keeping secrets could coexist with her condemnation of the rider leadership.
Unfortunately, Onyx Storm is where Yarros’s stated theme falls apart. Chapter 20 is where the demolition truly takes place, but the first signs of the impending destruction can be found here in the Prologue.
That could alter…everything.” Muffled voices sound beneath me, and I quicken my pace. “It’s definitely worth investigating later.” Not that I’m willing to risk Andarna by shouting that she might be our newest weapon, especially not when the rumor has already circulated that we’ll seek an alliance with Poromiel. What could be worse than leadership endangering Andarna? The whole Continent’s leadership seeking to do the same.
Violet wants to withhold information that she believes will save the entirety of the Continent because she worries that the information will be used in a way that runs counter to her obligations to her dragon.
This is exactly what the rider leadership did.
Actually, no. This is worse than what the leadership did.
Violet has no reason to actually believe Andarna will be at risk or endangered. If anything, given Andarna’s vital role in saving Basgiath and the fact that she is the only known rainbow dragon at this point, Violet has every reason to believe that the leaders of the Continent will give Andarna every accommodation, both keeping her safe and ensuring every available resource is put towards finding the rest of her kind. With how things stand, the only possible risk Andarna might face is a loss of autonomy or being ordered into a battle, outcomes that the Empyrean could overrule with ease (after all, we are meant to think they kept Andarna secret in the first place precisely so that they could protect her from some undefined threat). In short, Violet has every reason to tell everyone what Andarna can do. The only reason she doesn’t is that she’s not guaranteed to like what these leaders might decide.
The rider leadership withheld the truth about the venin in order to maintain a policy of isolationism, thereby protecting a finite pool of resources that they did not believe could support the entire Continent’s population. They were avoiding what they believed to be an unwinnable war as well the unrest and desperation that would follow a large influx of refugees from that war. Also, their decision didn’t endanger the lives of the whole Continent, just the people living outside of Navarre. That’s not a nice thing, but it’s still a smaller number of people than Violet is endangering here.
Yet we’re just supposed to turn a blind eye to this because … Violet is Good. She is the most intelligent person in this world. Everything she does is justified. All the people who disagree with or inconvenient her are evil.
This is a lesser example. What’s coming in Chapter 20 really shines a spotlight on this hypocrisy.
OPTIMISM
Thus far, I’ve mostly been negative about this Prologue. Those of you who read the Prelude first may be wondering where this optimism I mentioned is supposed to be.
On my first read of the Prologue, as I reached the end and tried to mentally sort through the damage caused by the retcons, an idea occurred to me. It was a desperate idea without a lot to back it up. Still, the possibility that it might be true put me in a far better mood as I turned my attention to Chapter 1.
For a brief moment, I thought that Yarros was using this Prologue to execute a soft reboot.
What is a Soft Reboot?
We often hear the term “reboot” thrown around in modern media, particularly when Hollywood decides to take a film or TV series and restart it from the beginning. This can be the same thing as a “remake” a film or TV series, but the two are not mutual inclusive.
What makes a reboot special is how it deals with continuity. Often, the motivation behind a reboot is that a series has become so massive, so dense with lore, that the decision is made to create a new continuity. This can be done to create a more accessible entry point to franchise, to erase elements that the creative team deems to be too much of a hassle to work around, or just to disassociate an intellectual property from something that hasn’t gotten the desired results. For example, every time Warner Brother kicks off a new series of Batman films, that is technically a reboot.
A soft reboot takes place when a piece of media is still in continuity with previous entries, yet certain details have been deliberately changed to take the series in a new direction. This can cover everything from a very public rebranding to a quiet pruning of certain continuity details to anything in between. While there are a lot of examples I could give of this, the one I want to use is Fast and Furious, a film I hadn’t watched from beginning to end until the weekend after Onyx Storm came out.
Fast and Furious (hereafter referred to as F4, since it is the fourth film in the Fast franchise) was an effort to take the franchise back to its roots from The Fast and the Furious (hereafter referred to as F1). The story once again features Brian O’Conner as an officer of the law and Dominic Toretto as a street-racing criminal, with Brian needed to balance his respect for Dom against his duty. The problem is that, even if one discounts Tokyo Drift (and one can discount it, since despite being the third film in the franchise, it happens after F4 in the series chronology), one can’t simply reset the story.
The events of 2 Fast 2 Furious (the second film) established the Brian was discharged from the LAPD as a result of his actions in F1, and while his record was expunged by the FBI as a reward for his actions in that film, he wasn’t going back into law enforcement. He and his buddy Roman Pierce were going to open an auto garag using drug money they had smuggled out from under the FBI’s noses.
At the end of F1, Dom, he was a fugitive who had to flee south across the US border. His crew was in no better shape: Letty and Leon were also on the run, Jesse was dead, and Vince was on his way to a hospital (where I would have assumed he’d then be arrested, but he’s in Brazil in Fast Five, so I’m guessing he escaped and also became a fugitive).
On top of these two issues, simply rehashing a variation of the truck robberies from F1 would make the new film feel unoriginal. There was a desire to escalate things.
Rather than trying to write a story that would organically set these things up, the creatives opted to play with the continuity.
How does one get Dom back into the US? Well, retcon Letty being a fugitive. Make Dom be the only one with a target on his back. That way, Letty can return to the US with a clean record, thereby facilitating the events that lead to her murder and Dom’s quest for vengeance.
How does Brian end up working in law enforcement again? Don’t worry about it, he’s just “reinstated.” Oh, but we want to escalate things, so let’s make Brian an FBI agent and pretend that he was all along, rather than making him a police officer again.
The reason why this works, rather than being a tangled snarl of contradictions, is that all of the changes are established in Act One of the film. The creative team lays out all of the changes very early on so that we the audience understand the foundation that the story is working from.
What Onyx Storm Could Have Done
Let us pretend for a moment that the retcons Yarros makes in the Prologue are the only ones she will make in the entirety of Onyx Storm. Andarna’s new motivation is the only unearned characterization, and the acknowledgement of her ability to slay venin is the only time Yarros tries to paint over a past mistake. This Prologue, which is really an addendum to the previous book, represents the foundation that Yarros will build upwards from.
I honestly feel like this could have been phenomenal.
The establishment of Violet’s drive to cure Xaden opens up so many interesting possibilities. Their relationship has always been incredibly shallow and based on Violet’s gratification; now she has to risk everything to save him, even if doing so threatens her ability to save everyone else. This is a motivation that can take the Romance subplot from a pretense for sexual tension to a force that drives the story.
While Yarros’s efforts to cover up her mistake with Andarna killing the venin is dishonest, the way she goes about being dishonest could have redeemed the effort. She is taking a plot hole and making it a plot opportunity. Something that is fundamentally illogical within the setting as we understand it has been molded into a question, a mystery to draw us deeper into the story and to propel events forward.
What’s more, because the search for a cure and the exploration of rainbow dragon abilities involves Andarna, Yarros has also established conflicts that will make Andarna narratively relevant. Yarros doesn’t need to invent excuses to keep Andarna out of the story. She is now central to the story being told, even if she can’t fly into battle with Violet the way that Tairn does.
Yarros had good ideas here. This could have worked, both as an Epic Fantasy and as a Romantasy. She just needed to stay focused. This is a good foundation.
…
Obviously, she’s not going to stay on it, but for a little while, I hoped.
THE GAME HAS (RATHER CONFUSINGLY) CHANGED
Next time, we will cover Chapters 1 through 4 of Onyx Storm.
I think the broad strokes of these chapters work well enough. This is a time for setup, for Yarros to reintroduce characters, plot elements, and key worldbuilding details that she couldn’t cover in the Prologue. It’s a slow start, to be sure, but just as slow as it needs to be.
Unfortunately, Yarros is not done yet with retcons. She makes some drastic changes to both the venin and the geopolitical situation of the world in these opening chapters. In doing so, she undermined or outright breaks the previous books with questions we should have never had to ask.
We’ll get into it on April 11th. Please remember to subscribe to the newsletter if you’d like to receive weekly updates with the latest posts, including next week’s review, The Hero of Numbani. Either way, have a good week.