Onyx Storm (Chapter 38 to Chapter 40 & Spotlight on Draconic Agency)
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
The squad quickly adjusts to having their connection to magic restored. A woman referring to herself as the “mistress of today’s festivities” approaches them, informing them that they’ll be permitted to meet the Queen of Zehyllna if they complete a test of composure. Each member of the squad must choose from a deck of cards with random “gifts”, then receive all of those gifts would good grace. (Effectively, it’s a non-magical Deck of Many Things, for those familiar with D&D lore.) The squad accepts and draws their cards. Yarros plays the next scene for comedy, with all the squad members getting random gifts that we’re supposed to find funny, until one of the flier Red Shirts is shot dead with an arrow as his “gift.” Despite their very blatant negative reactions to this, Violet achieves victory by thanking the mistress of festivities for the gift.
Later, after Aaric arranges an alliance with the Queen (a meeting we don’t get to see) and the dragons have confirmed that the rainbow dragons aren’t on Zehyllna, the squad agrees to stop at an uninhabited island to burn the bodies of the Red Shirt flier and his gryphon. They spend the night on Zehyllna. Violet has a crisis of faith about her leadership skills (yes, this is the first time this has come up in the entire book), and Xaden showers her in validation.
The squad flies to another island, which conveniently also has magic. After burning Red Shirt and his gryphon, Violet demonstrates her decisive leadership by splitting the squad to do a search of the uninhabited islands between them and the next inhabited island on their tour. (This is presented as her coming into her own and proving herself as a leader.) She and Ridoc remain behind to wait for Red Shirt’s pyre to burn down and to allow Andarna to rest. Violet is then surprised by six rainbow dragons, who reveal themselves and use magic to telepathically connect with her.
PLOT
Power Fantasy
The Test
Was there really any doubt that Violet would pass this Deck of Many Things test?
Yarros has not only demonstrated but outright celebrated (both in that ELLE.com article and in how she frames scenes) that Violet has no control over her emotions … and yet constantly celebrates her as the “rational woman”. No matter what Violet did here, Yarros would have framed it as her displaying the necessary composure to pass the test. Even within the scene as written , we are shown that the bar for passing the test is so low that failure was nearly impossible. When Red Shirt Flier died, Cat needed to have her mouth covered and was physically restrained by holding her off the ground (while her feet kick at the air, making her intentions very clear). If that is not a failure of composure, what is?
Mary Sue Insecurity
Violet’s moment of doubt about her leadership skills is another manifestation of the Mary Sue insecurity we saw in Part 2 of Iron Flame. It pops up out of nowhere and exists purely so Violet can be assured of how awesome she is.
The doubt is kicked off by them not finding the rainbow dragons on this island, as if Violet, the “rational woman” chosen by Tairn for her “intelligence”, never considered the possibility that they wouldn’t find the rainbow dragons and can’t conceive that maybe they’re on one of the other islands (or even another continent, since Aaric referenced other continents existing while the group was on Hedotis). Yarros just decides to flip a switch and have now be the moment Violet panics.
Yarros adds to the insecurity by having Violet feel responsible for Red Shirt flier's death, glossing over the fact that the whole point of the Deck of Many Things test is that it was completely based on luck and therefore out of Violet’s hands. (Also, including this factor begs the question of why Violet didn’t have the doubt after Garrick nearly died on Hedotis.)
It’s conflict that exists purely so that Violet can get past it by being validated, with no actual error or fault that needs to be corrected.
The Speech
Xaden’s full speech to Violet about what a wonderful leader she is extends more than a page. About a third of it is relevant to the dragon agency Spotlight, assuring Violet that she is a great leader because she was chosen by Tairn.
Bracketing this are two rather baffling platitudes. I don’t think either one would be worth commenting upon in isolation. Yarros has demonstrated throughout this series that she understands nothing about good leadership, so clichés are really the best we can expect from her. However, much like Violet’s speech in Chapters 5 and 6, this otherwise forgivable content synergizes with context to produce an absolute nightmare.
First, early in this speech, Violet tells Xaden that he’d do a better job leading the mission than her, to which Xaden says this.
“The best leaders are the ones who never want the job.”
The problem here is that Violet pitched a tantrum back in Chapter 20 about how she wants to be in charge of the squad. She bemoaned and demonized Grady for getting chosen over her based on merit. She has displayed a general obsession with “power for power’s sake”. She does want the job of leader. What she’s demanding here is that someone tell her she’s doing a good job. In short, this is another example of Yarros making a thematic statement after demonstrating the anti-theme as her true position.
At the close of the speech, Xaden explicitly tells Violet that she’s better than him - or, at least, that she will be once she stops this Mary Sue insecurity nonsense.
“I’ve seen the moments you don’t just rise to the occasion - you own it. Deverelli. Unnbriel. You poisoned the entire triumvirate of Hedotis, for fuck’s sake. Imagine who you’ll become when you finally learn to not just embrace that confidence but live it.”
Yarros is invoking her self-indulgence as proof that her self-insert Mary Sue is a good leader, promising in the process that Violet is even more powerful than what she’s already displayed, if only Violet was willing to stop hesitating and “live” her power.
Uhh … so is she promising an escalation of Violet’s depravities?
Will Violet murder people’s pets and extort them with the threat of forcing them to eat the corpses? Will Violet destroy the Navarre wardstone entirely to punish the rider leadership for their failure to take in refugees? Will she start murdering children in advance to send a message to people she doesn’t like? Will she assert her sexual agency over Xaden with zero regard for his consent?
Could Yarros not be bothered to write a scene of Violet displaying actual competence and virtue and then promise escalation from that?
Reminding Us (and Lying to Us) about the Stakes
Something I glossed over in Chapter 37, during the flight from Hetois to Zehyllna, was Yarros reminding the audience that there was supposed to be a ticking clock element to this story.
We only have two major isles left to search for the irids, and as much as I enjoy not being hunted by Theophanie, we can’t stay out here long enough to thoroughly scour all the minor ones. Every day we fly lengthen sthe time it will take to get home, where the least of our worries will be the court-martial waiting for us if we don’t bring with us the assistance we disobeyed orders to find.
In Chapter 40, as an excuse for Violet’s insecurity, we get a repeat.
And the irids aren’t here. They aren’t fucking anywhere. Fire burns in my stomach, and for the first time, I allow myself to consider what happens if we don’t find them. Andarna will be crushed. Melgren will be furious. Aetos will throw us all into a cell for dereliction of duty.
We could lose the war to the dark wielders.
I refuse to let that happen.
“At least we’re already in with the enemy,” Tairn grumbles.
“Go back to sleep.”
Xaden isn’t the enemy. He’s been infected by it.
Why is Yarros reminding us of basic information? Does she have so little faith in the intelligence of her audience that she thinks we’d have forgotten this already? Does she realize that the meandering power fantasy is making these things seem trivial, leading her to reinforce basic information as a crutch for her bad decisions? Did she write this book in one draft, a few pages per day, and include this as a reminder to herself because she didn’t written about it in a few weeks?
The reminder about Xaden particularly frustrates me. The Prologue set this up as something that would drive the story. Why do we need to be reminded of it? To be clear, the fact Xaden is struggling with temptation and that Garrick and Violet are ready to deal with him has popped up here and there (it comes up both when Xaden is giving Violet the pep talk and again in Chapter 40 when Violet splits the party), but no effort has been made to address it. I feel like we’re right back in Chapters 13 through 18, with Yarros making excuses not to drive this subplot forward while reminding us of how urgent it is.
Sacrifices
We’ve covered the hollowness of Yarros killing off Red Shirts in the place of accessories or actual characters in past reviews. This killing is a textbook example of how empty these deaths are.
The Red Shirt Flier sacrificed here was nomially the squad’s medic, and he was Cat’s love interest in the Pair the Spares exercise we previously covered. That’s it. We know nothing else about him. The other flier Red Shirt on this hunt at least gets to bicker with Mira as she lures him into an inevitably abusive relationship. This guy is just a name and an association with a secondary character we were told the hate all through the last book and who is, at best, a very caustic person in this book.
What really sucks the life out of this killing is Ridoc. This Red Shirt is killed at the cliffhanger of Chapter 38. Ridoc’s fake-out death was the cliffhanger to Chapter 36. We just had Yarros pull back from a death that would have actual weight. At that time, she made a big deal over just how much Ridoc means to Violet. Here, Red Shirt only matters because Violet needs to keep her emotional composure during the test, and afterwards, she doesn’t so much mourn his death as worry about feeling bad as she tells other people about his death. Imagine if Yarros had sacrificed Ridoc here instead. That would have given this death some punch (as much as any accessory could ever garner, at least), and given how important Ridoc is built up to be, that is a trauma that could reasonably be expected to make Violet doubt herself.
Or, for that matter, why not kill Dain? This is that other potential opportunity to dispose of him that I mentioned back in Chapter 19. His death should also have had some punch and would be just as likely as Ridoc’s to justify Violet’s doubt. What’s more, if Dain died here, Yarros would not need to keep thinking up fresh ways to humiliate him.
Arbitrary Advancement
The rainbow dragons are just … here … on this random island.
Neither Violet nor anyone else in the squad found them. Nothing on any of the four islands led here. The squad just picked an island to burn some bodies, and by the rules established by the Deck of Many Things test, there are only bodies to bury due to dumb luck. It makes the events on the four islands feel completely pointless.
I’ll come back to this in the Spotlight. For now, let’s just say that this feels every bit as arbitrary as Xaden giving Violet a venin-killing dagger in Chapter 29 of Iron Flame.
CHARACTERS
Ridoc and His Dragon
While Violet and Ridoc are waiting on the uninhabited island for Andarna to rest and Red Shirt’s pyre to burn down, we get an interesting scene between Ridoc and his dragon. The pair frolic on the beach at the waterline, with Ridoc’s dragon spraying him with water. Ridoc explains to Violet that this was payback for a prank he’d pulled on the dragon a few weeks earlier. When Violet comments that this back-and-forth pranking is odd, Ridoc responds, “Are we? … Or are the rest of you the weird ones?”
This is a small yet effective scene that captures the relationship between the two characters. Yarros does a good job at showcasing their relationship even though she can only show us one side of the conversation. I honestly wish we got more of this, from all the dragons (including the ones she has speak on a regular basic). Right now, Ridoc’s dragon has more character than Tairn, Andarna, or Sgaeyl, and that’s despite the fact he’s so hollow and so irrelevant to the narrative that there’s no point in me telling you his name (which is given in the text multiple times).
WORLDBUILDING
Limited Magic
Yarros has this to say about magic on Zehyllna:
No wonder the leaves are almost fully green. Zehyllna has magic. Not enough to channel or even properly shield, and nowhere in the realm of wielding, but there are definitely two strands of power trickling down the bonds from Tairn and Andarna.
She further says this about magic on the uninhabited island where the rainbow dragons show up:
Power ripples through me and energy crackles along my skin with about half the intensity that it does in Navarre.
We’ve found magic. And more than there was on Zehyllna, too.
Prior to the arrival of Zehyllna, we were told that magic only existed on the Continent, with venin depleting magic from the land as they went. This was not an issue. The idea that magic exists only in the one place is a simple rule that doesn’t demand elaboration.
Now, not only does magic exist in other places, but it also exists in other places in degrees. So now, we have to ask: why? Why do these islands have magic while the others don’t? Why does this uninhabited island have more magic than the inhabited island?
This issue only exists because Yarros is giving us enough data to notice contradictions. This is soft magic that is overstretched, or else hard magic where she failed to provide enough information to support it. The end result is artificial. The only answer we have is, “Because the author said so.”
There is a hint of a potential explanation. Before I explain it, I must emphasize that Violet never connects these dots herself. Her infallible intellect, which Yarros is so desperate to display, does not jump to this conclusion. If I were to be extremely charitable, perhaps Yarros is planning this to be a reveal down the road and doesn’t realize she put in enough information for the audience to realize this before her self-insert Mary Sue. The more likely explanation, though, is that Yarros does not intend this, and if she changes her mind later, she will have some fresh excuse lie for how her self-insert Mary Sue did not connect these dots.
During the altercation with the King of Deverelli, there was a moment where Violet jumps to the conclusion that the venin attacked Deverelli in the past.
“Oh, we’ve never involved ourselves with venin.” Courtlyn shakes his head. “War destroys isles, blocks economies. Supplying those at war, however…that’s where the money is. We remain neutral in all things and always have. It’s how we’ve maintained trade, commerce, growth, and knowledge for the world no matter what god you worship or magic you can access.”
“But they’ve been here, right?” I narrow my eyes slightly, noting that there’s now a panther perched directly behind me. I lean forward to look around the servant who is still holding our dish shut. “Did you defeat them?” Or cure them?
Courtlyn glares. “To imply that our isle is weak, conquerable, is a line you do not want to cross. Such an assumption is disastrous to an economy that is built on safe, stable trade. People do not invest in unstable isles.”
What’s more, in Chapter 42, we’ll get a line about how the land can “regenerate” in the wake of the venin.
“Only when [the venin are] faced with starvation will they confront the evil they’ve become. Either they’ll die off and the land will regenerate, or they’ll confront the abominations they’ve become and change.”
What may have happened is that the venin have already ravaged the islands. That at some point in the ancient past, the venin drained all the magic from these lands. Perhaps the islands have been in a process of gradual recovery, with Zehyllna being farther along in that recover than the other inhabited islands that the squad visited and this uninhabited island being the farthest along.
This is pure speculation, but it’s better than nothing.
Zehyllna: The Gambler Hat Island
We learn only two things about the island that reveres the God of Luck:
They believe in accepting both good and ill fortune with good grace, to the point of testing visitors with games of chance.
They revere both dragons and gryphons.
While we get less about the people of this island than any of the previous, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Yarros isn’t undermining their culture by insisting are one thing and then having Violet show them up. The fact that the reverence for dragons and gryphons doesn’t have a clear link to their chosen deity further adds some nuance to their culture.
What puzzles me, though, is that there’s no acknowledgement that they live in a land of magic. When Violet and the others first realized there was magic on Zehyllna, I thought it would lead to a reveal that the rainbow dragons were on the island with a local group of dragon riders. Alternatively, given that comment from the King of Deverelli about welcoming people regardless of “magic you can access”, I thought maybe we’d discover some other magical tradition, such as a group that has figured out their own way to use magic safely (if not tolerating weakened venin as a part of ill fortune). At the very least, I thought Violet could take note of their reverence for dragons and the presence of magic and assume these people know where the rainbow dragons are. The fact that we get none of that makes it seem like Yarros only gave this island magic to mislead the audience in the Chapter 37 cliffhanger.
Forging an Alliance
This is how the meeting with the Queen of Zehyllna went, as summarized by Mira to the rest of the squad.
“Aaric agreed to terms, which were oddly favorable to us. They’ll send an advance party within the next couple of months and the rest of their troops whenever we’re ready to receive are forty thousand of them.”
Drake nods and looks Cat’s way. “We’ll be able to man thousands of cross-bolts, drive wyvern to the ground for a waiting infantry, increase patrols -”
The main issue I see here is one of scale. What does forty thousand troops actually mean in this conflict? However, I don’t think this is the best place to discuss this. Yarros plays with numbers again in Chapter 44; we’ll discuss it there. A more immediate concern is what Yarros says those troops will be used for.
In terms of driving wyverns into the ground … don’t the wyverns drastically outnumber the dragons? I do appreciate that Yarros has thought of something for the infantry to do, and wyverns should be vulnerable to normal weapons by the rules established thus far, but isn’t part of the threat of wyvern that there are so many of them that dragons can’t really execute this sort of strategy? Seems like the dragons would be attacked by other wyverns while forcing down their chosen prey.
As for “cross-bolts”, does Yarros not understand how logistics work? Does she think that weapons just spawn based on the number of soldiers that exist? Unless there are thousands of unmanned cross-bolts all over the place, simply having the soldiers won’t help with a cross-bolt shortage. Frankly, given what we previously covered about venin mobility and death wave attacks, the infantry would already be focusing on cross-bolts, so it seems like all available weapons should already be manned rather than squandering soldiers on “patrols” (unless Navarre and Poromiel are dumping resources into thousands of weapons they don’t have the crews to use).
Again, I do like that Yarros is trying to give these soldiers something to do. It’s just that she’s constructed a threat that only the riders and fliers can combat. It makes these numbers seem meaningless, regardless of what they actually mean in terms of the overall conflict.
SPOTLIGHT: DRACONIC AGENCY
We covered the issue if draconic agency back in Chapter 13 of Iron Flame. During the speech to validate Violet’s leadership skills, though, Xaden says something that enflames it. The arrival of the rainbow dragons further complicates matters.
What Xaden Says
“The best leaders are the ones who never want the job. This is your mission because Andarna chose you. Tairn chose you.” His hand rises to my face. “What they never tell us in the quadrant is that rank is well and good, but you and I both know that the moment we fly onto the battlefield, it isn’t the humans giving commands. I hate to break it to you, but you were selected by a general among dragons. You can choose to step into leadership, or he can drag you. Either way, you’re going to end up in front.”
My heart starts to race as his words pierce a shield of denial I wasn’t even aware I’d been hiding behind, exposing a truth so blatantly obvious I feel foolish for not having seen it before. Tairn will always lead, and I will always be his rider.
Codagh speaks through Melgren, not the other way around.
Reaction
What Yarros suggests here is an idea with so much narrative potential. If she had written that story, it could have been great. However, this is not the story that she’s written. At every turn, we are shown humans giving the orders and the dragons obeying. After all, if the dragons are in charge:
What is the point of human ranks and of ordering dragons to submit to the hierarchy of the rider leadership?
How could the rider leadership impose hardships on a mated pair like Tairn and Sgaeyl?
How could it simultaneously be true that the Empyrean sides with Violet and that the rider leadership (who, according to this, serve as the discretion of the Empyrean) opposes her?
Since Yarros wants to explicitly highlight Codagh speaking through Melgren, why did Codagh not put a stop to any potential threat to feathertails and Andarna specifically with an order issued to Melgren? Why was there any need for cloak-and-dagger to keep Andarna hidden during the Dreamless Sleep?
Since “dragons don’t make mistakes”, and since the dragons of the Navarran riders did not permit them to defect at the end of Part 1 of Iron Flame, why was Yarros demonizing the Navarran riders?
Yes, I know I am repeating all of these points, but Yarros chose to shine a fresh light on all these problems by claiming that the dragons are in charge as a means to validate her self-insert Mary Sue.
Saying that dragons take over on the battlefield does not fix this. Generals don’t just serve on the battlefield - they manage logistics. They ensure that the right resources get to the battlefields to make victory a possibility. Tairn would need to exert his authority on more than just the battlefield. More practically, throughout the battles across the series thus far (and later in this book as well), dragons do not give any orders on the battlefield. At most, they spot threats before their riders do and make suggestions, which the riders then use to issue orders to the dragons. For this to make the slightest bit of sense, Yarros would need to fundamentally restructure Navarre’s military, the way Basgiath trains riders, and all of the previous fight scenes involving dragons.
Setting aside the plot hole, we come to the issue of dragons not being characters. Yarros can Tell us that Tairn is a general, but at no point has she Shown it. She has Shown very little character to him at all. At most, he’s a grumpy old man to serve as a foil to Violet and Andarna. The same goes for all the dragons. Yarros is trying to validate her self-insert Mary Sue using the credibility of non-characters.
Implications
There is a way to reconcile this, but if it is indeed what Yarros intended, that would actually make things worse.
Maybe the way that dragons influence and act through their riders isn’t through conscious interaction and issuing of orders. Maybe the dragons influence the behavior of the riders. Maybe what Xaden is saying is that Tairn is imparting some specialness of Violet that will make her a leader.
The reason this is worse should be obvious: it takes the agency away from every single rider. It would imply that every rider’s characterization is controlled by their dragons. None of them have a choice in the matter. They are all under the influence of greater forces. That would mean that Yarros is handing Violet yet more power that she has not earned. It would imply that all of the rider characters Yarros has demonized, for any reason - Dain, Aura, and Grady, just to name a view - were victims who she abused for no reason.
What Yarros Should Have Done
If Yarros really wanted this sort of dynamic to exist between dragons and riders, the bare minimum she needed to Show us would be Tairn ordering Violet around and serving as a mentor. This would include:
Never giving into Violet’s command to stop restraining her with magic prior to getting the saddle in Fourth Wing.
Ordering her to accept flight training help when Dain offered it, rather than waiting for Xaden to force the issue.
Giving her orders in battle.
Presenting a dissenting opinion to other decisions Violet makes, only validating in situations that are true to his character.
In other words … Tairn shouldn’t have been a dog with a voice. He should have been his own character, with discernable motivations and desires separate from Violet.
Rainbow Dragons (Heavy Spoilers)
I said above that the rainbow dragons revealing themselves on a random island that Violet and the other just happened to visit for unrelated reasons was arbitrary. While it is true, it is also an understatement of the problem.
You see, the rainbow dragons are actual characters. At least, they are supposed to be. Through their ability to link Violet into their telepathy, they are able to express themselves directly, rather than accessorizing a human rider. They also aren’t bound by any agreement between dragons and humans that might make them subject to a human hierarchy. These rainbow dragons are supposed to be fully in control of their own actions.
And yet Yarros still uses them as tools to arbitrarily drive the plot.
The Hunt
Violet and the squad didn’t find the rainbow dragons here. The rainbow dragons revealed themselves. As one of the male rainbow dragons directly tells Violet in Chapter 42:
“We have watched some of your journey and feel it is not peace you seek, but victory.”
At a bare minimum, this means they were observing the events on Zehyllna. They could have revealed themselves on the fourth island and spared the need for the test and the leadership speech from Xaden. There’s no reason to believe that they weren’t watching on any of the other islands, either - after all, if Andarna has access to her abilities on islands without magic, the other rainbow dragons should, too, so they could have been invisible and spying on the squad while on any of the islands. What prompted them to reveal themselves now? It can’t be because Andarna was alone. They’d know she wasn’t really alone, because Tairn and Ridoc’s dragon were still on the island, and since we don’t know when they started watching the squad, there’s every possibility they could have spoken with Andarna on Hedotis (you know, when she was readying herself to murder children).
Oh, and this isn’t even their island. They explicitly tell Andarna that they live on another island. So it’s not even like they are revealing themselves because the squad stumbled onto their nesting grounds. They just decided that now was the best time to have a chat, rather than on any of the other islands.
All this is to say that the hunt of the rainbow dragons hasn’t reached a resolution. The hunt was, in fact, completely pointless. Yarros cycled us through the same power fantasy four times over and then just decided to have the plot jump forward, without even being able to justify it as being at the whims of a character.
The Wardstone
In Chapter 42, Andarna asks the rainbow dragons to breathe on the Aretia wardstone so that it will function properly. They refuse, for reasons we will get into next week.
At the end of Chapter 52, one is going to show up at Aretia just in time for a Deus Ex Machina. Yarros does give a reason why he changed his mind, but that reason does not explain how he showed up at exactly the right moment for a Deus Ex Machina, particularly given the passage of time between Chapter 42 and Chapter 52 and the length of the journey he’d need to undertake.
All this is to say that Yarros is using this dragon as a puppet. In Chapter 42, she needed the story at a low point, so she had the dragons decide one thing. In Chapter 52, she needed a Deus Ex Machina, so she decided that a dragon changed his mind and showed up at the moment that would yield maximum drama.
Also, while we’re on the subject, it’s worth pointing out that this dragon fires up the wardstone without a rider. This means Andarna never needed a rider to fulfill ehr desirny. All that nonsense in Iron Flame about Andarna and Violet being meant for each other is just that - nonsense.
What Yarros Should Have Done
Made the hunt matter.
It really is that simple. All she had to do was have Violet learn a couple clues on each island that would lead her to figuring out where the rainbow dragons were. They could still come to this one island by accident, but the rainbow dragons would then remain hidden until Violet realized that this was the right island, thereby prompting them to reveal themselves.
Alternatively, if Yarros wanted to have the rainbow dragons be characters with agency (which would then demonstrate that the other dragons have agency), she could have the rainbow dragons reveal themselves to Violet somewhere along the journey. That would actually be a good way to justify the power fantasy moments (at least after Deverelli): the rainbow dragon could tell Violet that she needs to undertake the tests set by the rulers on specific islands so that the rainbow dragons as a whole can judge her character. The cycle could be in the interest in hitting milestones for the dragons.
Final Thoughts
I don’t hate the ideas that Yarros toys with regarding draconic agency. I just wish she’d stop toying with them and commit. There was a chance for a fascinating series that fully justified the power fantasy as part of Violet’s growth, testing Violet and forcing her to prove herself to first Tairn and then they rainbow dragons.
Alternatively, if Yarros wants dragons to be animals at the whims of the riders, that’s fine too. If she wants to do that, though, she can’t use the dragons as a source of validation. Violet can’t be proven as a leader by virtue of bonding with Tairn if Tairn is not a leader himself.
I guess the lesson for all of us from this is the same as last time: consistency is king. Don’t expect your story to hold together if you ask your audience to swallow contradictory information.
RAINBOW RELEVATIONS
On September 26th, we’ll cover the actual meeting with the rainbow dragons, which fills Chapters 41 through 43.
Yarros uses these chapters to explain why Andarna was left behind as the sole rainbow dragon in Navarre. I’m … uncertain how to feel about it. The idea Yarros poses is not terrible, and she toys with some interesting thematic ideas in the process. It’s just that there are holes in this explanation as large as Asher’s plan to leave clues for Violet.
At the same time, we get some more character work for Ridoc. It’s an interesting development for him. Finally, for the first time since Liam, one of Violet’s friends gets to call her out for something. It’s a welcome breath of fresh air, even if the oxygen content is a bit low.
We’ll get into it next time. I hope to see you all then. Please remember to subscribe for the newsletter if you’d like weekly updates on the latest posts. Please also share this review with others if you enjoyed it. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a great week.
