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Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
Series: The Empyrean #3
Publication date: January 21st, 2025
Pages: 779
Spice: 🌶️🌶️
Synopsis:
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.
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(Friendly reminder: don't read reviews for books in a series past what you have read yourself or some things may get spoiled inadvertently.)
Review:
Violet has a full load on her to-do list. First and foremost is to remain in her seat on her general dragon, Tairn and not to die today. Second would be to broker relations between Navarre and the Isles that have long since been separated by betrayals of the past. Third on the rank of importance would fall to finding Andarna's family of the seventh breed and see if they would return home to fire the ward stones within the provinces. And finally, the one thing Violet may quietly hold as most important of all if not advertised that way, is trying to find a cure for venin so she can save the ones she love from a fate worse than death; the lost of their very souls. Throughout Violet's journey through the Isles she is takes along books that her father wrote for her to prepare her for her journey. She takes her Quest Squad into unfamiliar and sometimes hostile territory with only her own determination to guide her. Violet was never born to be a leader but with a dragon so rare she is one-of-a-kind and another is the strongest of bonded dragons, she may have be given a choice in the matter. Can Violet save her family, friends, continent and love of her life or is she doomed to fail and watch it all turn to ass under the boot of one venin Maven who is determined to make Violet her newest recruit?
With Rebecca Yarros giving the George R.R. Martin response of not giving a time table for when the forth book was coming out I was hesitant to read this one. I didn't want to delve back into the world that I fell in love with and then be left with so many questions at the end that started rolling around in my mind as I try to puzzle them out with friends. However, the amount of spoilers that are swirling around the interwebs made it unavoidable. If I didn't want to learn something about the book before I was ready, I need to read it now. As is, I will likely be re-reading it when the Graphic Audio comes out because listening to that was STELLAR with Fourth Wing and Iron Flame.
When I started getting into the book I had a hard time falling back in love with all the characters and that was after only a few months between when I finished Iron Flame and when I started Onyx Storm. I also seemed to have found a much bigger appreciation for some than I had originally thought. I always loved Ridoc because he was just a goofball and it made some of the more dramatic scenes a little lighter with him in attendance. He was no different in this book but there were moments when we saw different sides of Ridoc that made me fan the blush off my face.
The flier scoffs. "I don't do second-years."
"Good thing I fuck like a third-year." Ridoc grins.
"Good thing I fuck like a third-year." Ridoc grins.
The romance between Violet and Xaden was back to being simmering hot just ready to boil over like it was in the first book. Their inability to be with each other as much as they would desire created a lot of tension between them but they never wavered in their love. Some might become frustrated or angry over their circumstances and while that may have been true, they never took it out on each other. The brief moments they stole for themselves were some of the sweetest interactions I have seen in books and a testament to how great Yarros is in creating truly wonderful romantic smut that has a little heat, a little intriguing twist, and a whole lot of love poured throughout the pages to make the couple something to wistfully sigh over even when they are going through absolutely hell together. They always seem to find themselves deeper and deeper in love no matter what choices they make, bad or good.
"I'm jealous of the armor that holds you when I can't,
the sheets on your bed that caress your skin every night,
and the blades that feel your hands."
- Xaden
I was told by my friend who had already read the book that there was a point when she had to stop reading because it was crushing her soul. She eventually got back into it and finished it but she was a wreck afterwards. That foreboding sense that I was about to have my world rocked sat with me through every single page turn until I reached what I had thought was the 'big sad' as I called it. I sobbed, sniffled, and went through several tissues. And then it got worse... and then... even worse. The last eighth of the book I was an absolute wreck. I came away from it with red eyes that made me think I had turned venin and Rudolph's nose. Yarros has a way of absolutely obliterating your world and making you thirsty for more. I am ravenous, famished, starving, and completely addicted waiting for the next book. Where's Andarna's time control capabilities when I need them to speed up time until the fourth book is ready to dive back into a world I have found a home in?
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