Onyx Storm (Chapter 34 to Chapter 37)
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.
STORY
Violet fends off efforts by Talia (Xaden’s mother) to talk to Xaden. She promises to get Xaden to come to a small family dinner. After Talia leaves, Violet talks to Xaden about the shock of seeing his mother. They observe two young boys and realize that they are Talia’s children with Faris (the Triumvirate member introduced at the end of Chapter 33). Violet orders Andarna to stalk the children, then goes to give Talia arinmint from the medical kit Brennan sent with the squad, under the pretense of a gift.
The dinner begins. The other two members of Hedotis’s Triumvirate join the dinner. Violet leaps to the conclusion that this is the test of wisdom they need to pass to engage in diplomacy with Hedotis. What follows is a drawn-out scene of Triumvirate members asking pseudo-philosophical questions and challenging life choices so that everyone can reaffirm their characterization. The scene mercifully ends when the Triumvirate serves the group a poisoned dessert. Violet recognizes the danger and manages to stop most of the squad from eating, but Garrick eats the dessert and almost dies on the spot from the poison.
It is at this point that Violet reveals her first trump card: despite having no reason to think that the dinner was anything but a family dinner with the other Triumvirate members as guest, she gave Talia poisoned arinmint, thereby allowing her to exort the entire Triumvirate over dinner with the threat of agonizing death. When this does not get Faris and the Triumvirate to reveal the antidoe to Garrick’s poison, she rushes into the kitchen and interrogate the cook. There is a fake-out death moment for Ridoc as he gets stabbed through his flight jacket. Violet then deduces the antidote and tasks Dain with administering it. However, she has gotten no closer to getting Faris to agree to an “allyship” with Navarre; he threatens to have his guards shoot down the dragons the moment Violet tries to leave. She then plays her second trump card: she’ll order Andarna to murder Faris and Talia’s children unless Faris gives in to her demands. Faris cracks, and the squad flees.
After the long flight back to the north, the squad reaches Zehyllna, the fourth island. They discover that the island’s inhabitants not only expect them but are eager to meet them, gathering in festival grounds set up outside of their capital city. As soon as the dragons land, they realize that Zehyllna has magic.
POWER FANTASY
We need to analyze this first, because most of what is wrong with these chapters can be summed up by it.
When I said previously that Hedotis was some of Yarros’s best-written power fantasy, I meant that sincerely. This is is the first time that Yarros has convincingly sold the idea that Violet is intelligent. She doesn’t just have Violet spout exposition to tell us she’s well-read, and she doesn’t heap on validation or degrade the intelligence of everyone else. She provides a meaningful demonstration of intelligence via a twist that a keen-eyed audience member could figure out before the twist itself happens. This is wonderful. This is growth.
It’s a shame that it’s buried in the midst of moments where she insists Violet is well-read, heaps validation onto Violet, degrades the intelligence of everyone else, and destroys any semblance of moral foundation this book might have had.
The fundamental issue here is the same as for the password-locked research. Yarros is incapable of writing characters more intelligent than herself. That’s bad enough when she just has to make Violet intelligent, but now she needs Violet to triumph over a group who are supposed to be smart people. The hoops she jumps through to demonstrate her own brilliance through her self-insert Mary Sue just demonstrate the depths she’s willing to sink to in order to preserve her image.
Let’s get into it.
Dealing with Birth Mothers
Before we get into the dinner, I think it’s worthwhile to highlight the scene where Violet fends Talia off from seeing Xaden. It’s a small moment that has almost nothing to do with what follows, other than introducing the dinner invitation. At the same time, the way it is delivered makes it seem like Yarros has obsessed over this conversation for years. It reminds me of how Violet’s interactions with Dain were handled back in Fourth Wing.
Throughout the scene, Violet doesn’t sound like her usual self. She sounds like a woman with years of experience in fending off the birth mothers of foster / adopted children. This makes sense for the author for whom Violet is a self-insert Mary Sue (remember, Yarros founded the foster care charity One October), but it makes zero sense for Violet, especially given Violet’s proclivity for emotional outbursts and for writing people off as irredeemably evil at the slightest provocation.
There’s also this weird interaction with the dragons in the background of the scene.
“Tell her the truth. He loathes her,” Tairn suggests. “As does Sgaeyl. The life-giver is lucky she wasn’t scorched this morning, though I do believe Sgaeyl is still contemplating her options.”
…
“That’s his mother,” Andarna argues. “What would you do, Violet?”
There’s also a moment where Talia tries to bribe Violet into helping her get through to Xaden by helping Violet get through the test the Triumvirate will set for them, to which Violet reacts with:
I blink, and pity recedes an inch. “What I need is for Xaden to be all right. If that means setting this house on fire and leaving without accomplishing anything else on this isle, then I’ll hand him a torch.”
I suspect Yarros has some … complicated feelings about the birth mother of the daughter she fostered and later adopted. If it was just the dragons providing commentary, I would write this off as a limp effort to explore a difficult topic, but the fact Violet plays the role of the wise mediator reminds me too much of what happened with Aura in Chapter 19. Yarros has put a lot of thought into how she would play both the wise counselor and the rabid defender of the abandoned child with a personal connection to her. So either her daughter’s birth mother tracked her down at some point, with this being Yarros’s idealized retelling of that encounter, or she’s brooded on the possibility of that happening and imagined how she would handle it.
Dinner Prep
Violet’s decision to order the murder of two preadolescent children (the eldest of whom Xaden speculates to be 11, at most) and poison her hosts is justified by … paranoia.
In Chapter 34, near the end of the scene where Violet convinces Xaden to come to dinner, Sgaeyl nearly tramples one of the two boys. This leads to Talia telling a maid to clean the boys up and send them to Faris’s parents house. Despite this not being that suspicious - after all, they did just narrowly avoid accidental death at the hands of her eldest son’s scaly dog, and important guests were coming over who might not appreciate having children underfoot - this happens when Violet leaves. (Bold once more indicates italics used for emphasis or internal monologue.)
[Xaden] leaves me standing on the veranda, my thoughts racing more rapidly than Tairn could ever fly. The triumvirate is coming to dinner. They’ll test us tonight. They sent the kids away.
Do they think we’re dangerous? Or are they?
We need an edge. What would Rhi or Brennan do?
Shit. What did I bring with me? Brennan send the med kit -
Brennan send the med kit.
I need Mira.
“Andarna, when those boys leave the house, I need you to follow as invisibly as you can,” I say down the bond.
“Are we scheming? I do enjoy scheming.”
“We’re planning.”
Violet has zero reason to believe that they are being tested. She has zero reason to believe that there is any danger. She absolutely has zero reason to believe that attempted murder will be at all necessary for the survival of her squad. She just decides, “Oh! I’d better make sure I have the POWER to murder everyone if we don’t get our way immediately!”
What I think happened here is that, on some level, Yarros realized that she couldn’t simply have the people of Hedotis be idiots in the way that she makes everyone else in this world an idiot. She needed them to come off as intelligent. The problem was, she also needed Violet to “outsmart” them, and writing that was beyond her capabilities. So she ruled that having Violet blindside them with poison and threatening to murder children counted as cunning. From there, she needed Violet to have a reason to do these abhorrent things, but since that would require too much editing, she slapped in this nonsense.
Also, yes, this is where the arinmint aftshadowing from the end of Chapter 11 finally pays off. Yarros had that earlier scene so that she could justify Violet having a poison the Triumvirate wouldn’t see coming (more on that later) with her.
Dinner
This was another section that was really hard to get through, because Yarros’s best attempt at intellectual conversation is pseudo-philosophy.
I’m not talking the pseudo-philosophy that you get during the fight scenes of Shōnen action series. As frustrating as that form of pseudo-philosophy can be, it at least tries to explore the thematic ideas that drive the characters involved in the fight. Stein and Medusa arguing about fear and morality during their fight in Season 2 of Soul Eater might have ruined the pace of that scene, but at least we were learning things. Both Stein and Medusa were laying all cards on the table, and Medusa was actively trying to seduce Stein to her cause in the process. It enriched both characters.
What Yarros did instead was just reassert things we already knew, such as:
Xaden loves Violet.
Violet’s squad members believe that she is the smartest person in the room and has the right to lead them.
Aaric doesn’t care about Navarre’s monarchy.
And so on.
On the Hedotis side, the discussion reveals only superficial details about their culture, none of which will be relevant after the group leaves Hedotis, so the discussion doesn’t even work as a means to characterize the antagonists.
Dessert
This one small moment is proof that power fantasy does not have to mean bad writing.
The dessert is chocolate cake, which Talia asked the cook to make because she remembered it was Xaden’s favorite food. As this dessert is revealed, Yarros seeds in clues. A member of the Triumvirate comments on Talia stockpiling chocolate for weeks, despite the fact that Talia was surprised to see Xaden on the beach at the end of Chapter 33. Though the wait staff bring out slices of cake for everyone, the Triumvirate and Talia are the only ones whose forks were forgotten. Violet picks up on these clues, realizes that Talia faked her surprise at seeing Xaden, and correctly deduces from the missing forks that the Triumvirate poisoned the cake as a test of wisdom for the squad.
This is the right way to show intelligence. It’s a small, self-contained moment, yet all the clues are there for the audience to realize what was happening before the reveal. This doesn’t fall apart under light inspection, nor does it rely on denying information to the audience.
The manner in which Violet deduces the poison and its antidote are less impressive. Yarros aftshadowed a reference to some poison berries in Chapter 29 while Violet was talking to Mira about Asher’s research and made a reference to Faris and Talia’s cook washing something blue off his hands in Chapter 34. It’s information that was technically established yet is so forgettable that the audience is unlikely to recall it. Still, given Violet’s past work with poisons and access to her father’s research, it makes perfect sense that someone with her skill set would be able to resolve this conflict. It does not break anything.
If all the power fantasy in this book were like this one small section, I would have far less to criticize.
Poisoned Tea
Any good feelings generated by Violet figuring out the dessert was poisoned vanished the instant Yarros revealed the poisoned arinmint tea and began to twirling her moustache over how brilliant her self-insert Mary Sue was.
As we go over the following points, bear in mind that Violet neither shows nor feels anything that might make this a morally grey act. She doesn’t experience guilt; she doesn’t doubt herself; she doesn’t acknowledge that she is effectively assassinating the leadership of a foreign nation. Her only negative emotions are centered around the fear that she won’t get an antidote for Garrick out of the Triumvirate … a circumstance she wasn’t aware of until after she’d already poisoned these people.
Premediated Murder
Violet is very open about poisoning the tea long before she knew the cake was poisoned. This was her bid to get the antidote for Garrick out of the Triumvirate. (Bold is, again, italicized in the original text.)
“I’ll make you a deal. I was saving this for the unlikely event that we failed your test and needed leverage, but you give me your antidote and I’ll give you mine.”
I cannot emphasize strongly enough that Violet did not realize the danger until Garrick was already eating the cake. By her own admission, the arinmint poison will work within an hour. The “rational woman” chosen for her “intelligence” jumped to the conclusion that they’d be tested over dinner and, with zero evidence that she would need to defend herself or her squad, chose to condemn the Triumvirate to death if they failed to meet her demands.
What was her plan if she and the squad passed the test? What if the test took more than an hour? What if it didn't even start until more than an hour into the dinner? What if she was wrong, and no test was administered at all? In any of these circumstances, how did she plan to administer the antidote without immediately destroying any hope of diplomatic relations with these Hedotis? The antidote needs to be poured into water, and there’s a visible chemical reaction when that happens. How did she plan to administer it without telling the Triumvirate she had poisoned them?
The only way this makes sense is if Violet’s go-to plan was a POWER play. She never intended to be diplomatic. She had made up her mind to extort these people before dinner even began.
The Antidote
Yarros couldn’t figure out a way for just the Triumvirate and Talia to drink the poison, so she lies to the audience about the squad being immune.
“You drank and ate everything we did,” Faris said, the blood draining from his face. “I watched.”
“Not before dinner you didn’t.” I drum my fingers on the table. “Before dinner, it was just the six of us. Are you curious what I gave everyone for an appetizer as we walked down the stairs?”
I went back and doubled checked to be extra-sure. At no point did Yarros show Violet providing this “appetizer”. She did not even show the squad “walking down the stairs”. She cut straight from Violet giving Talia the arinmint tea to everyone at dinner a few hours later.
(The reason this is a lie, versus setup coming after a payoff, is a matter of phrasing. If Violet had said, “I gave everyone the antidote before we walked down the stairs,” that would be Telling rather than Showing, but it would not be dishonest. The phrasing Yarros chose to go with implies that this was something the audience should also have been thinking about, except she never showed us the scene being referenced.)
Arinmint Ass-Pull
“Time for your test. Do you know why arinmint is illegal to export? Why it’s against the rules to take it outside Aretia?
…
“Arinmint of all things. Ironic that it’s your ignorance and not mind that we discovered tonight.”
…
“Arinmint looks like regular mint, which is why its export is outlawed. By itself, steeped in milk, or turned into tea with lemon or a little chamomile, it works wonders for sleeping and healing. But when you combine it with some pretty ordinary herbs, say the shredded bark of the tarsilla bush, it becomes a deadly poison, and tarsilla grows all along your beaches.”
Once more, just like with the password the the locked journal, Yarros has withheld information from the audience to force the idea that Violet is intelligent. Once more, again like the password, the fact that Violet knows this and other people do not is laughable nonsense.
Why would arinmint be illegal to export if it is harmless by itself? By this logic, shouldn’t all these “pretty ordinary herbs” also be outlawed? Why is only exportation illegal if it is this easy to turn into a poison? (Even if none of the “pretty ordinary herbs” are native to Tyrrendor, we get nothing to indicate that their importation is also outlawed, so it should be easy to produce and use this poison inside Tyrrendor if arinmint can legally be used for other purposes.) If this is the reason arinmint exportation is outlawed, why is this not common knowledge, similar to how people know that methamphetamine-based cold medicine is a controlled substance (if not outlawed, depending on where you are) because it can be cooked to make meth? Are we really supposed to think that all these leaders of an island of scholars, elected for their intelligence, would know it is illegal to export arinmint from Tyrrendor but not why it is illegal to export? That Talia, who is from this island, never looked into it while she was living in Tyrrendor?
Season 2 of Apothecary Diaries (conveniently, the episodes that aired around the same time that Onyx Storm released) did this same plot so much better. Maomao discerns early on that someone is trying to smuggle poisons into the Rear Palace - more specifically, ingredients to make abortion drugs, which can then be used to poison pregnant concubines, assassinating the Emperor’s heirs while making it look like miscarriage. The ingredients are smuggled in the form of scented oils that are individually mundane and harmless but become dangerous in combination. Maomao, who is trained as an apothecary and worked for years in a brothel, recognizes these scents and immediately petitions for these oils to be banned from the Rear Palace, much the same way that she got lead-based cosmetics banned the previous year. Not one or two oils that were deemed particularly important - all the oils were banned. While it’s not clear if the reason for this was widely advertised, the most important people within the Rear Palace (namely, the concubines) were told, and given that the Rear Palace exists to pump out heirs for the Emperor, every serving woman or eunuch with a modicum of sense could probably guess that the oils were somehow poisonous.
Comparing these two examples of the same concept is night and day. One story presents a rational woman with actual intelligence, wielding information that is built up gradually, that is internally consistent, and that has a purpose outside just one scene. The other is Onyx Storm.
Unsafe Sex
While the Triumvirate are dying of poison, Violet tries to convince them to aid Navarre because the venin are the whole world’s problem. (Bold is for emphasized italitcs.)
“We’re fighting a war for the future of our world. This shouldn’t be a competition. Logic and wisdom dictate that you assist us so that you don’t become us.”
“It is your war,” he growls as Dain sprints back.
…
“It will be our war.” I lean down as Faris shudders. “You think they won’t come here once they’ve drained every last ounce of magic from our home?”
“We’re safe.” He glares up at me. “We have no magic here.”
Faris is 100% correct. Yarros has gone out of her way to demonstrate this.
You may recall me mentioning last month that one way she visually shows the absence of magic is the islands is discolored vegetation. Hedotis, is particular, has been described as being a virtually colorless landscape. The opening of Chapter 38 will emphasize the colors on Zehyllna and have Violet conclude that it is because Zehyllna has magic. As we covered back when we first analyzed this idea, it logically follows that humans native to the islands should have little or no magic as a consequence of living here and eating food sourced from here. This point is further supported by something we’ll get to in Worldbuilding.
On Deverelli, the absence of magic was the excuse given for it being safe for Xaden and Violet to have sex. Yes, that was before Violet knew Xaden could drain from alloy, but they were considering sex again in Chapter 34, so clearly, they think that Xaden draining Violet directly is still impossible.
By the rules Yarros has established, Faris has won the argument. Of course, following her own rules would get in the way of the power fantasy. Violet needs to be right. So instead of adhering to her own established rules, Yaros has Violet deliver this line.
“Foolish, foolish man.” I shake my head. “They’ll drain you.”
This isn’t framed as a lie. Violet is being sincere. She believes this, and so we the audience are meant to agree with her, regardless of whether that’s compatible with the existing canon.
A “Destigmazing” Portrayal of the “Beautiful” Act of Child Murder
It’s time to discuss the thing I have harped on since the Prelude: Yarros framing Violet’s premediated, unprovoked attempt to murder two preadolescent children as a good thing.
To be clear, I’m not making a big deal out of this because it is an inditement against the author’s personal character. Yes, Yarros did put up her own moral credibility as collateral when she made that unhinged statement about Romance in the ELLE.com article, and that destroys any protection she might have been granted via the separation of art and artist, but that’s a separate issue from narrative quality. Whether Yarros is truly a psychopath who will talk about her children being scared by overly pushy fans out of one side of her mouth while lauding attempted child murder out of the other doesn’t affect this book.
The reason I make a big deal out of this is because the author insists on making her self-insert Mary Sue the moral axis of this story. She has used the precious innocence of children, the value of a child’s life, to prop up said self-insert Mary Sue as unambiguously good while damning others as unambiguously evil. For Violet to do this is as devastation to the foundations of her narrative as Violet choosing POWER over Knowledge in Chapter 20.
Moment of Damnation
Immediately following Violet’s explanation of how the arinmint poison works, this is how the power fantasy ends.
I lean down, careful not to jostle my ribs, so I’m at his eye level. “Ask me why we’re going to fly out of here without you saying a single word.”
“Why?” he grinds out.
“Because you love your sons.” I smile. “That’s why you sent them out of the house tonight.”
Fear widens his eyes.
“Ask why there are only six dragons outside.” I lift my brows and wait, but his breaths start coming alarmingly fast. “If you’re going to be dramatic, I’ll just give you the answer. It’s because the seventh currently sits next to the window at your parent’s house, where your boys sleep - where she’ll stay until she knows we’re out of range of any weapons you might be hiding.”
Approval floods the bond, and I imagine Tarin’s chest puffing with pride.
“That’s impossible.” Faris shakes his head. “Someone would have seen.”
“Not when that dragon is an irid.”
Sweat drips down his forehead, catching in his eyebrows. “You wouldn’t. They’re children.”
“Do you really want to take that risk?” I stand and slide the first glass [of antidote] his way. “Or do you want to drink and live?”
“Faris!” Talia cries. “Please!”
“You didn’t outsmart me. None of this happened.” He reaches for the glass.
“I didn’t outsmart you alone,” I admit. “My father helped.”
He clutches the antidote. “The eyes. I should have recognized your eyes. You’re Asher Daxton’s girl.”
“One of them, yes.” A slow smile spreads across my face. “And the other currently has command of your house. Make your choice.”
He drinks.
Xaden doesn’t so much as look at his mother when we walk away.
Why?
When Violet extorted the King of Deverelli by threatening to kill his incapacitated pet, it was a wholly unnecessary act, but at least there had previously been factors that would have justified it and that were out of Violet’s control. She and Xaden needed to save Halden from a mess he got into on his own. The King’s guards (and, for that matter, that same pet) had just tried to kill Violet and Xaden. While a “rational woman” renowned for her “intelligence” should have registered that the threats had already been dealt with, an irrational person who was still caught up in the heat of the moment might think that breaking the King was the best chance for survival.
That excuse doens’t apply here.
We’ve already covered how Violet arranged all of this before a threat existed, but let’s consider why she is jumping to extortion now. She wants to ensure a clean getaway. The problem here is twofold.
First, there is no reason to believe that they can’t make a clean getaway as it is. Yes, Faris makes a threat about “the city guards” shooting the dragons down, but at this stage, no one outside of the house knows what has happened. Said house is on the beach, and no mention to cross-bolt emplacements have been made since arriving on Hedotis. (We can assume they do exist, given Violet assumes that they do in the opening of the next scene, but the point is that none have been established anywhere near this house.) With the rules presented to us, Violet and the squad could simply quietly gather their things, burst from the house and run for their mounts, and fly out over the ocean before the people manning the cross-bolts have any idea something is wrong.
Second - and this is particularly important - the only reason they need to make a clean getaway is that Violet poisoned the Triumvirate. If she had not done this, every possible scenario would have ended in the squad packing their things and leaving without resistance. Violet had no reason to believe that this test would in any way involve an effort to keep the group from leaving. Even if we were to assume her actions could be retroactively justified by Garrick being poisoned, the facts that poisons are an established knowledge base for her and that she ends up figuring out the antidote without Faris would then retroactively flip things right back.
In other words, this is like if an armed thief broke into a house in the dead of night, realized that the owner was sleeping in the bedroom, executed the owner with a gunshot to the head before the owner could wake up, and then tried to claim the killing was done in self-defense.
Psychopathy and the Blessing of Khorne
Please reread that passage. Notice how Violet shows no doubt. She has no reservations. She feels no guilt or shame or generally ickiness. She is calm, collected, and fully committed to the slaughter of two children to achieve her goals. She gives more consideration to her ribs than to the mother of said children, who is wailing in terror and despair in the same room.
Remember - this entire story is Violet’s 1st-Person POV. We are privy to an unfiltered stream of her thoughts. Every vile thought she has towards Dain is shared with us. Every sexual thought she has about Xaden is shared with us. We get constant commentary about people having good points or how jokes fall flat. So when Yarros portrays her as calm and collected here, without anything resembling a conscience, we know it is not an act. We know she is not bluffing. Violet was fully prepared to order the execution of two children if Faris did not submit. She was either going to order Andarna to burn them alive (which would be the more efficient and effective option, which is why I have been referring to “immolation” throughout this review) or else slaughter them with her teeth, claws, and scorpion tail.
At no later point will Violet be held accountable for this. She will not reflect upon it. In fact, Yarros is settling the morality of what she is doing here by having both her dragons - the dragons who “don’t make mistakes”, who are the mouthpieces by which we know Violet has the power of God and anime on her side, who are least disagreed about how to deal with birth mothers - validate what Violet has done here. We are meant to see this as an unambiguously good thing.
Hypocrisy and Anti-Themes
Remember how Chapter 11 made a big deal about Red Shirt Flier’s two younger brothers? How we are meant to see Navarre as evil for not taking in such innocent refugees? How Xaden offering them shelter in Tyrrendor is a noble and virtuous act?
Remember how Violet has been constantly framed as the noble protector of helpless children through her efforts to keep secrets about Andarna safe from the rider leadership?
Remember how the condemnation of the rebel children to the Riders Quadrant for the crimes of their parents, despite being only minors at the time that this sentence was issued, was framed as a decision that even loyal Navarrans were uncomfortable with?
All of that has been uprooted.
In all of these situations, we were meant to think that the rider leadership was evil, that those who opposed them were good, because something might happen to children. There was no guarantee of death. Said death would not have been executed by the rider leadership. Death wasn’t even the rider leadership’s goal - even in the case of the rebel children, this punishment was already a step backwards from execution, and it was assumed that the dragons would be character witnesses who would only choose the rebel children who could be trusted (i.e. this punishment was intended to spare the innocent). Despite all of this, the mere possibility that death might occur was all it took to satisfy the moral binary.
What Violet has done here was so much worse. Here, the murders she threatened to carry out were deliberate acts, premediated and arranged by her, with the express purpose of using the death itself to achieve a goal. Once more, by the moral standards of this series, she is more evil that the faction Yarros insists to be the villains.
The moral foundations of this story have been virus-bombed into oblivion.
And yet, despite this destruction, we will be expected to continue interpreting this story through the lens of moral binaries that revolve around Violet.
What Could Have Redeemed This Moment
There was a simple change that Yarros could have made to redeem this horrifying act:
She could have made it something Andarna did of her own initiative, with Violet playing along out of desperation.
Let’s say that Violet did not send Andarna to stalk the children. Perhaps Andarna sneaks off on her own. Tairn could alert Violet at the start of dinner that Andarna was missing, which causes Violet some anxiety, but when she reaches out to Andarna, Andarna tells her that everything is fine and that she shouldn’t worry. We get the mutual poisonings, followed by Violet trying and failing to extort Faris with the poison alone. Faris could get the upper hand, pointing out that Violet and the others won’t escape if he dies, and Violet could balk, realizing that he does indeed have her cornered. At this point, Andarna would chime in, informing Violet that she’s outside the house where the children are located, ready to kill the children if Faris doesn’t let the squad leave. Violet could be horrified by this and beg Andarna to stand down. Tairn could chime in, reminding Andarna that Violet protected her and the hatchlings from the rider leadership, so Andarna should show the same mercy towards human children. Andarna could then assert that she will make good on her threat whether or not Violet agrees, because, “Dragons don’t make mistakes.” Trapped, seeing no other way out that will not result in the deaths of the squad and the children, Violet puts on a brave face and relays Andarna’s threat to Faris, praying that it will break him before any more blood is shed.
This would need to be delicately handled, but it could be done. It would create a point of conflict between Violet and Andarna. It could trigger a state of moral reflection as Violet considers what really separates her from the rider leadership, since both enact the will of their dragons and the cost of innocent human lives. It would make a certain moment of accountability that lands on Andarna in Chapters 41 to 43 much more impactful.
But this would require that Violet not have the upper hand for even a moment. It would interfere with her agency. It would take power from her and give it to her dragon.
And Yarros does value POWER above all.
PLOT
Most of the plot issues are folded into the power fantasy, but there are three additional points that are worth considering here.
They Don’t Need to be Here
Again, just like Unnbriel, that squad knows as soon as they land that the rainbow dragons aren’t on the island with no magic, yet they insist on staying to negotiate with the locals.
This one makes slightly more sense than Unnbriel. This is supposed to be an island of scholars. It’s acknowledged within the text that vital information on where the rainbow dragons are might be hidden in their libraries. Unfortunately, Violet and Xaden are both ready to give up this possibility and leave the island just so Xaden doesn’t have to deal with his mother. When Violet does start extorting Faris, she makes no attempt to get at any of that lore, merely focusing on escape. The lore ends up feeling trivial - or like it was an excuse.
While brings us right back to the same situation we were in on Unnbriel: the only reason the squad stays, versus resting and hunting in some remote corner of the island before moving on, is so that the power fantasy can happen.
Another Ridoc Fake-Out Death
The fake-out death for Ridoc serves as the cliffhanger ending for Chapter 36. The note I tagged onto this line during my first read-through was:
Another cliffhanger that could work, except Yarros has already spared her darlings from death so many times that I don’t trust this to stick.
You may recall that Yarros pulled this except same stunt, with this exact same character, for the cliffhanger ending of Chapter 43 of Iron Flame. (Technically, it’s even the same method of death, just changing the piercing weapon from multiple arrows to one thrown kitchen knife.) It’s an established trend by now that she won’t kill her darlings, only Red Shirts, with the sole exceptions at this point being characters she kills in the climax of a book for the sake of a heroic sacrifice. I wasn’t genuinely worried for Ridoc here. I wanted him dead, because at least killing him would be a deviation from formula.
So, when it was revealed on the first page of Chapter 37 that Ridoc was not dead, I was not disappointed. I expected Yarros to lie to me and try to manipulate me. She is nothing if not predictable.
What makes this even more frustrating is that this is one of the two opportunities that Yarros squandered to kill off Dain. She had done nothing but humiliate him throughout the hunt for the rainbow dragons. Even here, all he does is manual labor, administering Garrick’s antidote so that Violet will be free to twirl her moustache at Faris. Imagine if Dain had been the one at dinner instead of Ridoc. He could have rushed headlong into danger to help Violet find the antidote and died in the process. The fact that this was done to save Garrick, a rebel child who was present at the climax of Fourth Wing, would have made this not only a sacrifice but an act of atonement (at least, if we adopt Violet’s twisted logic and pretend he is more at fault for what happened than Xaden was). Violet could mourn this friend, could regret not properly mending bridges while she had a chance. This could morph into rage, and said rage could push her over the edge and lead her to threaten the children when she otherwise wouldn’t. (This wouldn’t undo any of the moral destruction we previously covered, but it would make the decision one of impulse and emotion rather than cold psychopathy.)
But no. Yarros wants Dain alive so she can keep torturing him.
A Mother of a Wasted Opportunity
During the analysis of Chapter 58 of Iron Flame, I compared the awkward way that Xaden’s mother was crowbarred into the story to the setup given to Kuvira in Season 3 of The Legend of Korra. Now that Talia herself has entered the story, I realize that comparison was uncharitable to Kuvira. At least Kuvira was the main antagonist of Season 4. At least studio interference limited the options for introducing her prior to Season 3. Thus, while Kuvira’s setup was an utter mess, at least it paid off.
Talia, by contrast, has no role in Onyx Storm after this scene. Her being here did not advance Xaden’s character arc. It didn’t even reveal anything about him that wasn’t already revealed when she was set up in Iron Flame.
At the end of the day, Talia feels like another mystery box that Yarros set up with no real plan for how to utilize her, much like the venin lure that was recovered at the end of Fourth Wing. Perhaps she had some half-formed ideas for how to use Talia, but because she didn’t plan this series out in advance, she realized it was one to many balls to juggle and decided to snip the dangling plot thread as quickly as possible. Much like with calling attention to her own mistakes in an attempt to convince us that they aren’t mistakes, she would have been better off doing nothing. Nothing would have been lost by deleting Talia from this story and having Violet and the squad be invited to dinner with Faris and his random NPC wife.
If Yarros did always plan for this to be Talia’s contribution to the plot, the situation’s not a lot better. Her awkward introduction in Iron Flame hinted that she’d play a major role in Onyx Storm, as if Yarros didn’t want to make it seem like she was spawning out of nothing and thus wanted us to know about her a book early. if that was never the case, Yarros should have just saved the backstory on Xaden’s mother until Chapter 34, after the twist reveal in Chapter 33. That wouldn’t be a good option, but the surprise would provided an excuse to feed the relevant exposition to the audience, so it’s at least better than what she went with.
CHARACTERS
Violet
I know Khorne cares not from whom the blood flows, but even I never thought that Yarros’s self-insert Mary Sue would be on board with child murder.
This was character assassination. I know we’ve covered her fundamental immorality in the past, but at least Yarros made an effort to cover up that immorality through framing. Here, Violet’s fully ready to murder children without any justification for that action.
Also, while trying to find the poison, we get a line that could have been effective, only for Violet’s established characterization to sabotage it. While fighting with the cook, we get this.
I throw the dagger with a snap of my wrist and pin the cook’s bloodied hand to the fucking doorframe.
He has the nerve to howl like he doesn’t deserve it.
Violet routinely casts harsh judgment on others. We saw how she clung to her spite towards Dain long after any rationalization for that spite had lost relevance. We’ve seen how she flips on a dime and demonizes people for not blindly submitting to her will. Even setting aside whether she’s ethically or morally right about the cook deserving pain for his role in the poisoning, there’s no emotional weight to this judgment. Violet would likely say this same thing after stabbing someone for cutting a lunch line.
Xaden
The way Talia was handled was an enormous waste of potetential for Xaden’s characterization, too. We could have learned something new about him. We could have explored his traits. Instead, Yarros just reinforces things we already know:
He’s angry at her for leaving him.
He likes chocolate cake.
He loves Violet more than anyone else.
He’s struggling with negative emotions and temptations spawned from him being a venin.
WORLDBUILDING
Hedotis: The Scholar Hat Island
As soon as the squad arrives on Hedotis, we get this from Violet.
Have to admit, this is the isle I’m most excited about. A whole community built on knowledge and peace? Yes, please.
It should come as no surprise, after the previous two islands, that this is not explored. Outside of framing the power fantasy as a test of Violet’s intellect and a handful of references to this place having libraries, there is nothing to actually hold up the idea that these people are scholars. Deverelli had a stronger case for being an island of scholars, because at least there, Violet actually went to a place where there were a bunch of books and extracted some form of knowledge from doing so.
The only other things we learn about this island or this people are very superficial.
They have an elected Triumvirate. As mentioned previously, Yarros doesn’t engage with this outside of some limp and self-defeating messaging about how training does equal leadership skill.
A lot of emphasis is put on the fact that the capital city is on the coast but doesn’t have a port, forcing ships to anchor offshore. This is easily handwaved as geography (more on that in Themes), yet we are told during the dinner (implicitly by Faris and explicitly by Violet) that this is actually because the people of Hedotis are “aquaphobic”. This doesn’t make sense, given how that a problem that would not be addressed by not having a port. They still need to cross the water to transfer goods and people between islands.
Their capital is a planned city, built by razing another city to the ground. This is used to accuse them of being “artificial”.
The island is rich in a mineral called “viladrite” (which Yarros made up), which gets into everything the locals eat and turns their eyes purple. This is a practical demonstration of the earlier point about how people are altered by their environment and thus people of a land without magic really shouldn’t have any magic in them. It also feels like Yarros ripped this off from Dune, though unlike much of what Yarros rips off, this doesn’t reflect a misunderstanding of what she’s stealing from (since it’s too shallow yo cause any issues).
Tyrrendor
Talia delivers some exposition about Tyrrendor during the dinner. This is done for the Triumvirate’s benefit, so it makes sense within the story, but what she says raises even more confusion about how and why Tyrrendor was part of Navarre in the first place.
“Tyrrendor is the largest province of Navarre,” Talia tells the triumvirate, rushing to her son’s defense. “Much of its territory lies beyond their wards, so its allegiance to the kingdom has always been … weaker than the others. It would not surprise me to find that in the course of this war, Tyrrendor regains its sovereignty, which is why a lifetime alliance” - her smile fades, and she glances at Xaden and me - “was secured.”
At this point, Yarros is having characters in the book actively acknowledge holes in her worldbuilding that we’ve already covered.
How was Tyrrendor ever made part of Navarre if they are outside the wards? Did they join willingly, centuries ago? If so, why, and why would this not be enshrined in their culture? If not, how did Navarre ever maintain control over them? Why did Navarre not just annex the part that it inside the wards, plus the area where the trademarked, biocompatible dental alloy is mined, and leave the rest of Tyrrendor to manage its own affairs? At this point, it seems like either Tyrrendor should be diehard loyalists, who proudly remain part of Navarre despite not giving more and receiving less than other provinces, or else they should have broken off from Navarre centuries ago.
A Land … With Magic?
Much like with the previous post, I do have notes about what we learn about Zehyllna at the end of this section, but they’re best reserved for next time so that we can do the whole island at once.
PROSE
Cliffhanger Overload, Round 2
Out of these four chapters, Chapter 34 is the only one that does not end on a cliffhanger. Much like on Unnbriel, the cliffhangers do all make sense, but also like Unnbriel, it feels like Yarros is ended every chapter on a cliffhanger because she doesn’t feel like she can keep the audience engaged otherwise.
Chapter 37 really doesn’t help this impression. Just like Chapter 33, this chapter starts us on one island, has a natural point for a chapter break when the ground departs the island, and then keep going right on through the travel to and arrival on the next island, all so the chapter can end on another cliffhanger. Aside from diminishing returns from the oversaturation of cliffhangers, this also makes the individual islands feel less important, since their stories are literally blending together.
THEMES
Wisdom versus Artificiality
While Yarros doesn’t make the people of Hedotis overtly stupid, she does go out of her way to try to make up flaws for them, as if trying to show that Violet possesses the superior intellect because she holds an inherently superior philosophy. This makes some sense as a workaround for her inability to write characters smarter than her. Unfortunately, this is another effort that backfires.
Yarros goes about this by attacking … city planning. While this is engaged with directly during the dinner in Chapter 35, she actually starts in Chapter 33.
I stare up at the city as Xaden reaches my side. “It’s beautiful but all so…uniform.” There’s a single row of merchants about fifty feet away, and then the three-story buildings begin. They’re all the same color with equally distanced windows, each with the same muted flowers hanging in baskets beneath them. “They razed the original structures about a hundred and fifty years ago and rebuilt with what Dad called intention.”
“That’s a little unsettling,” he agrees, looking back between our shoulders. The tiny cuts on his cheek and forehead have scabbed over, but the bruise along his jaw looks worse today. “And there’s no port. It’s a coastal city with no port.”
The trading vessels are all anchored off the coastline, and we passed more than a few dinghies on the flight in. Small boats line the beachfront, pulled up onto the sand as if marooned here. For being the isle of wisdom, it’s a far from logical approach.
And then, during the dinner, we get this exchange.
“From the air, it seems laid out perfectly.” I sit up straight. “It’s a collection of exquisitely proportioned neighborhoods, all with central meeting places for markets and gatherings.”
It is perfect,” Roslyn agrees, rolling her own jade stone over her knuckles.
“And cruel.” I give my assessment with a flat tone Xaden should be proud of. He covers my hand with his and laces our fingers together.
Roslyn grasps the stone and places her hand in her lap. “Please, do go on.” It’s more of a threat than a request.
“You razed an existing city to build what stands now, did you not?”
“We improved our capital, yes.” Roslyn’s eyes narrow. “The smaller towns should have their rejuvenations complete by the end of the decade.”
“And in doing so, you destroyed the historical base of the city, homes your citizens had lived in for generations. Yes, it’s beautiful and efficient, but it also shows your intolerance for things that are not.” I swallow hard. “I find it perplexing, too, that you don’t seem to have a port.”
“It is unwise to venture over water when we know next to nothing about what lurks within its depths—” Faris flusters.
They’re…aquaphobic?
The idea that Yarros seems to be pushing here is that Hedotis represents an inhumane and artificial state. They are “cruel” and “intolerant”, while also motivated by irrational fear. This supposedly compromises whatever intellect they’d otherwise possess. Violet, meanwhile, possesses true wisdom, carrying about the history of things and being tolerant for things that aren’t beautiful or efficient.
This falls apart on so many levels. I will start with the most broken points and then work my way back to the ideas that are merely absurd.
The first and most important point is that, much like Chapter 21 of Iron Flame, Yarros is asking us to stand with Violet based upon a principle that has nothing backing it up. We have no idea what the previous capital was like. We don’t even get to see one of the towns that faces this supposedly “cruel” fate of “refurbishment”. We are just expected to agree that what Hedotis has done here is a bad thing because what came before was a “historical base.” We’re also supposed to care that Hedotis’s people lived in those homes “for generations”, despite not having any reason to believe the people of Hedotis care about that themselves. This feels like another virtue signal, albeit one about historical preservation rather than identity politics. There’s no substance to these ideas, only a statement.
Second, of all the hills Yarros could have chosen to plant this flag on, civic infrastructure is one of the worst. Buildings, streets, sewers, and almost everything that makes up our cities are not designed to last literally forever. Everything is built based upon the conditions and engineering principles of the day, usually with an understanding that it will eventually be replaced. In some cases, such as bridges or sewers, a functional lifespan will also be established, with the assumption that these will be replaced (either in kind or with more modern infrastructure) when that lifespan is exceeded. Yes, there are exceptions made for things of immense historical and cultural value, but that requires people to stand up and defend those things. Yarros hasn’t established any such resistance here. This means that either no one in this democratic society stood up for the old city, or else the democratic process gave the Triumvirate of the day a mandate to proceed with the rebuilding. The long and short of it is, based on the little information we have, we have more reason to give the people of Hedotis the benefit of the doubt than we do to side with Violet.
Third … why this obsession over a port? A coastal city doesn’t need to be a port, especially if there’s a port reasonably close by. If the idea is that there is no port of the island, that’s still not so strange. This world doesn’t seem to have the technology needed to construct a harbor through massive dredging and barrier construction operations, so they’d need to use natural harbors where possible. Maybe the island just doesn’t have the geography for a proper port. We’re outright told in Chapter 33 how the coast is “rocky”, making this seem likely. At that point, the question just becomes whether the people of Hedotis have a good enough reason to be on the island to deal with the inconvenience of needing to move to and from offshore boats via dinghies. It could be a practical reason (such as resource availability) or a cultural one.
At the end of the day, Yarros hasn’t demonstrated anything here. She hasn’t proven the superiority of Violet’s position or some grand point about the real world. Her bottom-of-the-barrel arguments just show she has no idea how to argue for her own cause.
How hard would it have been to have the squad fly over the ruins of an ancient port city that Hedotis is actively cannibalizing to build their new, port-less utopia? Maybe some camps of displaced people waiting for houses to be built in said utopia? Some activists clinging to an old statue as guards move in to topple it? Small touches were all she needed to make this message work.
ISLAND OF HATS 4: DUMB LUCK
On September 12th, we journey to the island of Zehyllna, where the worships of the God of Luck live. This will take us from Chapters 38 through Chapter 40.
The stop on this island is exceedingly brief, to the point that the island itself is of almost no importance. What’s important here is that the events on this island trigger a certain discussion between Violet and Xaden. In it, the issue of the dragons being characters and how much agency they actually possess in brought back into focus. Next week will therefore double as a Spotlight piece for the topic of draconic agency. (If you haven’t already ready my analysis of this topic in Chapter 13 of Iron Flame, now would be a good time to do so, as I’ll be referring back to some of the points covered there.)
I hope to see you all then. Thank you for bearing with me. Please remember to subscribe to the newsletter if you’d like to receive weekly e-mails with links to the latest posts. Have a good week, everyone.
