I fought it. Oh, how I fought it.
“Just give it a try,” my wife said, placing Fourth Wing in my hands like it was an innocent little book and not the literary equivalent of a depth charge. I resisted, I scoffed, I muttered something about TBR piles and personal dignity.
And then I read it. And then the sequel. And now, with Onyx Storm, I have accepted my fate: I am fully submerged in Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series, and I’m not coming up for air.
This book? This book is war. It’s blood and fire, it’s whispered secrets and shouted betrayals, it’s politics played with a knife in one hand and a dragon’s leash in the other. It’s also, infuriatingly, spectacularly, ridiculously addictive. It hijacks your brain, rewires your emotions, and suddenly you’re pacing your house at midnight, muttering, “Damn it, Xaden.”
Violet Sorrengail, our protagonist, remains a finely tuned chaos magnet, somehow still standing despite every conceivable attempt to crush her into paste. She navigates the world of dragon-riders like someone who has fully accepted the fact that survival is a temporary condition. The enemies are cruel, the allies are unreliable, and the dragons? The dragons are the best part—half nuclear arsenal, half sarcastic commentator, and entirely uninterested in your feelings.
The action is relentless. Battles are written with the kind of brutal precision that makes you flinch, while the political maneuvering is so sharp it could slice through steel. And then there’s the romance—oh yes, the romance—laced with enough tension to snap a suspension bridge.
But the real villain here isn’t the enemy forces or the shadowy figures pulling the strings. No, the real villain is Rebecca Yarros herself. She is a menace. A mastermind of emotional warfare. She will lull you into a false sense of security, then—wham—hit you with a plot twist so devastating you’ll need a moment to process your life choices. She doesn’t just kill darlings, she lines them up, hands them a cigarette, and says, “Any last words?”
At this point, my wife just watches me suffer with a knowing smile. She knew this would happen. She led me into the fire, and I danced willingly into the inferno. And you know what? No regrets.
If you haven’t started this series yet, be warned: Onyx Storm isn’t just a book. It’s an ambush. It’s an addiction. It’s a full-scale military operation against your emotions. And the worst part? You’ll love every second of it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go stare at a wall and process my feelings.