Onyx Storm (Final Retrospective)
Happy New Year, all.
We haven’t just survived 2025. We’ve survived yet another entry in the Empyrean. It’s time to look back at the dark road we just walked, reflect upon it, and consider what lies ahead.
Once more into the breach, my friends. Then we can rest.
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, unmarked spoilers will be provided for the entirety of Onyx Storm, up to and including the end of the book. The same applies to the previous entries in the series as well.
This Retrospective will assume that everyone has read the entirety of the Onyx Storm review series up to this point. This isn’t necessary to understand what follows; I just won’t be going into anything near the same level of detail that I do in the sequential chapter posts.
STRUCTURE
This Retrospective will be broken down as follows.
Summary
Plot
Characters
Worldbuilding
Themes
Prose
Genre
Series
Book 3
Book 4
The TV show
Author
What Could Have Been
SUMMARY
Onyx Storm had so much potential. There are isolated moments where Yarros shows a capacity to improve. She sets up ideas that could make for fascinating stories.
The issue is that, at the end of the day, Yarros does not care about being a good writer who tells a good story. She doesn't care about having a coherent or well-paced plot, engaging characters, a world that makes sense, or themes that don’t collapse under the slightest bit of reflection. She has made it very clear in interviews that she is a writer because she wants to be validated and praised. This is an exercise of ego.
That plays out in the text. This entire book is nothing but an endless slew of power fantasy. In her desperation to build herself up via her self-insert Mary Sue, Yarros collapses nearly every narrative element, tearing down anything that she even begins to build up. Add to this the virtue signalling, the pornography, and the fact she’s clearly bloating the narrative to drive up the page count, and this book reads as a desperate and narcissistic attempt to snatch up the glory of being a bestselling Fantasy author without needing to do the work to earn that accolade.
Plot
Pacing
While this book’s plot commits many sins, including damaging the past books, its single greatest failure is its pacing.
There are 66 chapters in Onyx Storm (67, if we count the Prologue). An overwhelming majority are either narratively irrelevant or outright filler:
Chapters 5 through 8 are power fantasy for a conflict that spawned from nothing just to be resolved by the end of Chapter 8.
Chapters 9 through 11 are an action set piece that is ultimately irrelevant to the wider narrative.
Chapters 12 through 18 are meaningless school drama and meandering side quests.
The meat of the story, from Chapters 21 through 40, seem to be relevant on a first read, though it quickly becomes clear that they are spinning their wheels through the same power fantasy four times over. They could have been cut down to one or even two cycles of this fantasy without damaging the narrative. However, once the rainbow designs arbitrarily reveal themselves, this entire section of the plot becomes pointless. It doesn’t even work as a character study. Violet doesn’t grow as a character during this period, merely resetting back to her state of untouchable perfection after temporary annoyances appear in her path.
Chapters 44 through 52 are, again, meaningless school drama and meandering side quests, culminating in an action set piece that is irrelevant to the wider narrative. At best, these chapters delay a character decision that should have happened in Chapter 43.
Chapters 55 and 56 are meaningless drama and fluff.
Chapters 61 and 63 are noise that do nothing to propel the climax forward.
This means that, at best, there are 20 chapters of story (again, including the Prologue) in this behemoth. Even if we wanted to be extremely charitable and salvage a couple chapters’ worth of scenes to ensure that the important elements to support the climax are established, just one third of this book’s chapters have narrative value. The rest is bloat.
Yarros has demonstrates that she is out of her depth here. She clearly has no idea how to properly write a book of this length and is resorting to just filling pages with any random self-indulgence that pops into her head when she sits down at the keyboard. The kindest thing that I can say is that the various bits of filler could be turned into interesting stories. To make just a few off the top of my head:
Rhiannon learning to be a good squad leader
Sawyer adjusting to his disability
Dain stealing Asher’s research from under his father's nose
Xaden being a professor
Those irrelevant action set pieces
Even in this charitable interpretation, these ideas fall flat because they should have been their own stories. They should not have been competing with the stories we were promised (the search for the rainbow dragons and Violet’s efforts to help Xaden). They needed room to breathe, both for themselves and so that they didn’t bloat this book.
Something I have commented upon in the Magnetic Magic review series is that The Empyrean might have benefitted from being converted into a series of shorter novels between 50 and 60 thousand words. This would allow each book to give proper attention to the individual ideas that Yarros is currently using as so much straw to stuff this bloated scarecrow. It would also allow Yarros to capitalize on the hype and valdiation she values so highly, rather than spawning a heap of trash and then complaining about how hard the spawning as been on her health.
Action
This is the only plot element where I feel Yarros has improved, but that praise comes with a caveat.
Yarros put a lot of passion and effort into both the aerial combat and the hand-to-hand combat. These are the only scenes in the book that feel like they got multiple drafts. She went the extra mile to immerse the audience in what Violet is experiencing.
Unfortunately, ever single action scene is kneecapped by some combination of the follow variables:
Because Yarros makes such a big deal out of Violet Representing her own disabilities, it is not credible that Violet would even survive most of these scenarios, let alone triumph. (Special mention goes to Violet stealing from the playbook of Xenia Onatopp after all the attention specifically paid to the weakness of Violet’s thighs.)
Yarros can only tear others down, not build Violet up. Many of these engagements rely on Violet’s opponents either being extremely incompetent or running away for no reason.
Emphasis is put on making Violet (or her allies) look cool when basic logic indicates that doing so should lead to failure.
The action scene is narratively irrelevant, fails to build character, and lacks meaningful emotional stakes to justify investment in what is taking placing.
These scenes are the second-best thing in this book, but that’s only because everything around them is worse.
Characters
What characters?
Violet is an author avatar floating in a sea of puppets. Xaden is a wish fulfillment object. The same applies to Tairn and Andarna to a lesser degree. Rhiannon, Imogen, and their dragons get to be characters in their filler chapters, but those are flash-in-pan moments that have no wider relevance to the narrative: they don't even get to interact with Violet in those chapters. The average NPC boss spawned by a Nemesis System has more depth and more coherent behavior than Theophanie.
That leaves … Ridoc.
The sequence of scenes in which Ridoc learns Xaden is a venin and confronts Violet about her response is the best part of this book. It’s not perfect. Arguably, because Ridoc ultimately rolls over and gives Violet what she wants with zero consequences, it is also undermined by narratively irrelevance. However, for this brief, shining moment, Violet shares the story with an actual character. He has his own motivations and agency, and he is using both to obstruct Violet. She can’t trample him with a tantrum or threats of violence. Violet is forced to interact with another human being as an equal, and that enriches the narrative dramatically.
This one interaction with Ridoc is basic storytelling, and yet is it an exotic phenomenon in Onyx Storm.
Worldbuilding
The lengths Yarros goes to virus-bomb the Chaos-corrupted rubble of her narrative by introducing new worldbuilding elements that fundamentally ruin everything that came before are honestly impressive. I have to wonder if she’s doing it deliberately. The idea that this level of self-destruction could be unintentional honestly boggles the mind.
The introduction of double Signets as a standard feature across the rebel children could have worked, but Yarros squanders it to lie about an editing error, and she chooses to given one of the rebel children a Signet that breaks the smuggling operation subplot of previous books and makes the climax of Fourth Wing impossible.
The introduction of divine intervention could have driven the story, but Yarros uses it in a manner that calls into question why the gods are not more involved in this series.
The introduction of venin Signets and the Balance mechanic calls into question how the Balance is calculated and arbitrated and how Xaden is not outed as a venin the instant another rider develops a shadow Signet.
Aaric being a precog is fine in concept, but Yarros messes up her own power scale and calls into question why Aaric did not do more to influence events.
Yarros’s dabbling in hard numbers creates issues that are evident even on a causal read.
Andarna’s ability to kill venin is fumbled, making it glaring obvious that her doing so in the previous book is yet another editing error on Yarros’s part.
The rules for breaking a bond between dragon and rider should have killed Violet many times over in Iron Flame or else spared Liam's life in Fourth Wing.
I’ve pummeled Yarros into the ground for this quote over her handling of the plot:
The books are fully potted for five books. The whole series is plotted out and arced and all of that.
The same could be said about worldbuilding. It is glaringly obvious that Yarros is not planning out these worldbuilding elements before she rams them into her narrative. There is zero regard for how they affect what came before.
Themes
Onyx Storm has only one meaningful theme: hypocrisy.
Every message that Yarros either claims to be forwarding or else virtue signals about on the page is either blown apart in favor or the anti-theme or undermined out of any shred of credibility by her ”destigmatizing” portrayals of things she wants us to find “beautiful”.
Her stated themes about preserving history in the face of those who would abuse their power to suppress information and about opposing those who seek “power for power's sake” is blown away as she grants Violet and her allies “power for power’s sake” and has Violet conceal and suppress information for less valid reasons than the antagonists.
Her stated values regarding accommodating the disabled - accomodations Violet expects for herself - are annihilated when Violet supports throwing away “dead weight” to get rid of a character who effectively has a mobility issue.
Violet's fixation of Representation reverses the moment she has the power to exclude people she doesn’t like.
There’s a lot of performative posturing over helping the poor, innocent refugees of Poromiel. Yarros acknowledge the arguments against this position without addressing them. She also uses children as the face of the refugees before celebrating the premeditated murder of children, and she makes a big deal out of helping the refugees if they can survive a death trap of a mountain pass on their own.
The idea that dragons are the decision makers is reinforced in the same book that Navarrian riders are demonzied for complying with the decisions of their dragons.
There’s something perversely beautiful about how dedicated Yarros is to destroying any semblance of moral high ground her self-insert Mary Sue might possess and any trace of a message to make this story more that masturbatory schlock.
Prose
Onyx Storm is as rife with non-sequitors, misused words, unsubtlety, and other general nonsense as its predecessors. The only area Yarros has improved is that the voice now does not aggressively clash with the setting, though that has less to do with how Yarros is writing and more to her putting Violet into scenarios where the disconnect is less obvious.
Then there are the cliffhangers. The final count for false cliffhangers is 9. On top of that, the second and third islands of the rainbow dragon hunts are chapter after chapter of cliffhangers that are used correctly but are so densely packed that they give diminishing returns. At best, it reads like Yarros wrote with the intention of releasing these chapters weekly on AO3 or some other fan fiction archive. At worst, it reads like Yarros has zero faith in the ability of her prose to hold onto the audience's attention and resorted to spamming the only trick she could think of to trick readers into thinking something exciting was happening.
Genre
The continuous marketing if this series as Romantasy is more a lie now than ever before. It is a Fantasy - a horrifically written Fantasy, but a Fantasy nonetheless. However, the Romance elements are so irrelevant to the story that to classify this story as a Romance would water that genre down to the point of being meaningless.
This is tragic because, as stated way back in the Prologue, Yarros set up a story that could have made for a compelling Romantic Fantasy. She then chose to cast it aside. The Romance subplot quickly becomes nothing but a vehicle for pornography.
SERIES
Not to beat a dead horse, but it does bear repeating:
The books are fully potted for five books. The whole series is plotted out and arced and all of that.
Yarros does not understand what “plotted out” means.
Book 3
Failure as a Continuation
Onyx Storm is a book that works far better without the continuity with its predecessors. There are multiple beats within this story that could have been decent or even great if the events prior to this book were left to the audience's imagination. With the established history, these beats collapse. Ridoc’s relationship with Violet and the emotional departure of Andarna in Chapter 53 are just two examples of this. There’s also the issue of Yarros lying to the audience as she tries to retcon away editing mistakes or past elements that are no longer convenient for her.
Then there are the mystery boxes. This book’s ending is a deluge of unexplained elements that are rammed in at the last minute. It's all but guaranteed that Yarros did not plan out the ending of Onyx Storm beyond a pair of sticky notes that read “battle scene” and '“Vioelt and Xaden are married now”. Based upon the handling of the venin beacons between Fourth Wing and Iron Flame and the reconning of how the Aretia wardstone works between Iron Flame and this book, Yarros either doesn't have a firm plan in mind for the new elements she’s shoved in at the end or is fully prepared to invaldiate any information she introduced here.
There’s also the filler problem we covered in Plot. If Yarros had “plotted out and arced” this series, why is this book so bloated with irrelevant nonsense? Why could she not structure this book so that all these meandering and pointless events either moved the plot forward or else built up the character or world?
At best, Yarros has a vague story concept for each book and a general concept for the climax. This is supported by something she told Variety back in January 2025.
Interviewer: You’ve said you’re a plotter. I know that you’ve got the beats planned out through the end of the series, but how much of the entire series have you been able to share with Amazon and with showrunner Moira Walley-Beckett so that they can plot out what the “Fourth Wing” TV show would need to look like?
Yarros: So they have the five-book arc, which went a little awry in Book 3 just because the positioning, but they already know that. But they have the five-book arc and the general big points of what happens in between each book, but they don’t have the specifics between Book 4 and Book 5, because I’m getting ready to go to my crazy plotting board and and plot out every single event that happens in each book, so that I make sure that I’m within my two books there. But they have general ideas.
By Yarros’s own acknowledgment, she is operating on “general big points”. That’s not a “plotted out and arced” story. That’s the vague concept that every amateur writer has before setting out to write a Fantasy epic.
Method Versus Madness
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with Yarros’s method in principle. It’s not like Rowling had a rigid outline ready for Deathly Hallows when she finished Goblet of Fire. The issue is that Yarros has already demonstrated that she, specifically, cannot write a coherent series - or even one coherent Fantasy novel - like this. We now have three examples of books that exhaust their premises hundreds of pages prior to the climax and then drown the audience in filler just to pump up the page count. We also have two examples of sequels that actively spit on continuity with their predecessors. Yarros does not demonstrate the talent, discipline, or investment in the craft or genre needed to pull off a big series on a book-by-book basis. Frankly, this series would probably be better off if she just handed off her “general big points” to a Fantasy ghost writer and let that person write the remaining books.
This brings me to something I’ve said a few times now while reviewing Onyx Storm: I don’t think that the delay for and general silence regarding Book 4 has anything to do with Yarros’s health or whatever other excuse she might make. I think that, on some level, she knows she’s out of her depth. I honestly wouldn’t be shocked if she follows GRRM’s example and puts off Book 4 for as long as possible. We may not see Book 4 until her popularity wanes and she finds herself falling back into the midlist.
Book 4
By the time this is posted, it will have been about five months since I initially drafted this retrospective. I have been coming back to this particular section repeatedly, revising and updating it whenever a new article came out to tell us what to expect for Book 4. The last time I did this was a few days ago, when Business Insider summarized the most recently updates available from Yarros’s various interviews and convention appearances.
She’ll start working on Book 4 once she’s done with her newest Contemporary Romance project.
She knows the title of Book 4 already, but is keeping it close to the chest.
A lot of mystery boxes and lore retcons to encourage theory-crafting and give herself wiggle rooms to lie to the audience, as we covered on Wednesday.
In other words, no news that we didn’t have 5 months ago. For that matter, a lot of the stuff the article quoted was from January or February of 2025. We have gone nearly a full year without anything of substance.
…
I’ve already shared my opinions about why Yarros is doing this, so instead, let’s consider why this is a problem.
As with Yarros’s approach to plotting her series, there are authors for whom this wouldn’t be an issue. After all, plenty of authors only release one book every two or three years. Even authors who provide updates aren’t guaranteeing a new release any time soon. James Islington announced the title for the third Hierarchy book, The Justice of One, last month, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be getting Book 4 of The Empyrean well before that comes out.
If The Empyrean had followed such a release schedule for the beginning, I’d say that going nearly a full year after the release of the previous entry, without a tentative release date, title, or any other major updates (mystery boxes and vague promises to make theory crafters squee don’t count), really isn’t a big deal. This would be especially true if the author in question was a private person who avoided the spotlight and didn’t have a major social media presence. Yarros’s health further buys her a little wiggle room, though the fact she’s healthy enough to do all these promotional events while also working on another novel somewhat undercuts this as an excuse.
That said, consider the release schedule this series started with. We went just six months between the first two entries. We waited just 14 months for the third. (Yarros also managed to release another novel between the second and third entries.) This is a rushed schedule that sacrificed quality for hype.
Now, if Yarros were to slow things down and sacrifice hype to regain quality, that would be one thing … but Onyx Storm proves she has no interest in doing that. She’s going to fill the space in between with writing books she actually cares about and with basking in her fame. It could take a decade for her to release Book 4, and I doubt the quality will improve all that much.
What this all amounts to is that an author who has no idea what she’s doing is allowing the only thing she has going for her, hype, to cool. She is sacrificing her only advantage when it’s very clear that she has nothing to sustain it with. The longer she waits, the more she hurts Book 4 and, by extension, Book 5.
Which brings my focus to her enabler: the publisher.
Why is Red Tower Books not tightening the screws and forcing Yarros to spit out product? I find the treatment of literature as empty content to be spat out and consumed loathsome (and rather distressing, if we take Yarros at her word that her health really was threatened by this release schedule), but Red Tower crossed that line already by rushing out the two entries of a Fantasy epic written by someone who doesn’t understand the genre in just six months. Why aren’t they following through? Why have they balked? Do they not realize the risk they are taking?
This buzz won’t last indefinitely. Some of the fans who enjoyed the previous books were already disappointed by Onyx Storm. A quick perusal of BookTube reviews indicates that many of the same people Yarros tries to pander to with her virtue signaling are already seeking out heresies to burn her at the stake for. One doesn’t need to be aware of the situation with The Winds of Winter to realize that even the most passionate fanbases will give up on a series if denied resolution. Surely, Red Tower wants to cash in their chips and get out so that Books 4 and 5 are profitable investments, right?
If Red Tower’s failure to motivation Yarros is a tacit admission that absurd release schedules to cash in on hype are a bad idea, wonderful. If Yarros really has learned her lesson and actually puts the time she’s been given into delivering a competently written narrative, even better. I just feel like there’s a way to go about this that doesn’t indicate that the author and publisher have no idea how to finish out this 5-book series they’ve committed themselves to.
The TV Adaption
At this point, I think the only reliable information about the TV adaptation is that Yarros gave the showrunner(s) an outline of the general plot beats she wanted to hit in Books 4 and 5. Granted, this could be another lie, but she must have shown Red Tower something to land a contract for 5 books with just a proposal. This is also how Games of Thrones was able to move forward despite the books having stalled. So I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt on at least that much.
Beyond that, everything about this show is still in flux. The showrunner has already been changed once, back in September. There’s rampant speculation about casting, but nothing solid. There’s also the very unfortunately reality that getting anything made in Hollywood is an absolute logistical nightmare. This show could very easily die before it ever gets to production, especially if things get delayed so long that the hype dies down.
I am strongly considering doing a reaction series for this TV on Reflect & Redraft when it releases. This would focus purely upon its merits as an adaptation, rather than exploring its merits as its own work of fiction (something I trust more experienced television reviewers to handle). Feel free to let me know if this is something you all would be interested in, as I would need to subscribe to Amazon Prime in order to do this.
AUTHOR
I give Yarros a lot of flak in this review series, yet I feel it bears repeating that people are complicated. One can’t get a complete picture of an author from her creative works alone. I want to believe that Yarros is a wonderful, intelligent person outside of the writing sphere.
With that important truth emphasized, the fact remains that what she vomits onto the pages of the books paints a picture of delusion, entitlement, narcissism, depravity, and outright psychopathy. Her viewpoint on Romance (and she does consider this series to be a Romance, no matter how little it fits that genre) compounds the issue.
“Romance is this beautiful place where women get to say on the page what we want, what we deserve, what healthy relationships should look like. [It’s about] destigmatizing what a woman feels she’s worth.”
Yarros has waived her right to the separation of art and artist with this absurd declaration. She backed Violet’s horrific behavior on the basis of what she thinks the genre should mean within our real world. In doing so, she put up her own integrity and credibility as collateral for Violet’s behavior. She has thrown her support behind extortion, animal cruelty, and attempted child murder. No one forced her to make this statement or write Violet as such as depraved maniac. She did all these things of her own free will, and she expects us to shower her in praise for it.
I sincerely hope that Yarros gives me a reason to think better of her in future marketing materials and / or by correcting Violet’s behavior in future books. I choose to believe that she is not the monster she makes herself out to be through her works.
However, this blog exists to critique art, not artists. I can only critique art. So I can't assess the author based upon her redeeming qualities in her private life. I can only understand her through her wok and the things she used to promote her work. So if she chooses to put up her moral credibility as collateral to talk about how “beautiful” her work is, then goes into default by spewing unhinged depravity onot the page, I will honor her wishes and seize the collateral.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
Yarros set up two wonderful plot threads into the Prologue.
The rainbow dragon hunt
The drive to find a cure for Xaden
The Violet Sorrengail from Iron Flame would not have sat around and waited for answers to these problems to fall into her lap, nor would she have waited for permission from the rider leadership to act. She would have been actively engaging with these problems from the start, on her own terms.
What Yarros could and should have done was have the story start with the decision to go to the southern isles having already made. If she wanted to have a few chapters at Basgiath to reestablish characters and set up the status quo for the ongoing world, then she should have opened with the effort to retrieve and learn from Asher’s research notes. Violet could then have handpicked her squad and gone rogue, rather than waiting for the permission of the rider leadership. From there, time could have been taken on each of the islands to actively search for the rainbow dragons and research lore on the venin, rather than having a gasp of power fantasy. This could then lead to Violet earning the location of the rainbow dragons as she assembles clues, while also assembling lore than can be applied in future books to cure Xaden. Furthermore, the added time spent on the islands, with Xaden cut off from magic, could be used to explore their relationship and show the audience what it has outside of sex and a psychic link.
If Yarros really wanted to have the school drama, that could have worked, too. One option would be to adjust the in-world geography. Rather than having the islands all be progressively farther from Navarre, the islands could instead by arranged around the Continent. This would make returning to Navarre between islands a practical decision, due to needing to fly past it anyway, and these returns to Navarre could be used to explore side plots like Rhiannon’s struggles with leadership or the ongoing war effort. Alternatively, she could have Violet and her handpicked squad spend the majority of the book in the southern islands while Rhiannon and / or Imogen serve as POV characters for the home front, cutting back to them whenever Violet is traveling between islands.
Onyx Storm did not need to be a disaster. Yarros set up things that could have made for a fantastic Fantasy story and a true Romance. The mess that was got is due to a lack of ability and care, not a lack of potential.
THE QUIET AFTER THE STORM
When Book 4 rolls around, I will be doing another book-club style deep dive that releases biweekly. This will require a bit of time to get into the meat of the review before I feel ready to start the series. In the interest of not keeping you all in suspense, I intended to do a one-off review soon after Book 4 releases (similar to what I’ve done for The Strength of the Few). This will function as both a preview of things to be covered in the deep dive and an opportunity for you all to decide in advance if you’d like to do a read-along.
With all that said, thank you for joining me on this adventure. I appreciate your continued support on this journey through the grim darkness of The Empyrean. I hope you all have enjoyed the ride.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
As mentioned in last week’s review, we have an exciting couple of months ahead.
On January 9th and January 13th, the Magnetic Magic review series continues with Curse of the Wolf.
On January 16th and 20th, we’ll finish of the War of Souls trilogy with Dragons of a Vanished Moon.
On January 23rd and 25th, we will dive into the Ravenor trilogy of Warhammer 40K novels with the first book, Ravenor.
We’ll then finish off January with Part 1 of the deep-dive analysis for The Strength of the Few.
Thank you all for starting the New Year with me. I’ve enjoyed having you along through 2025, and I hope you’ll stick with me through 2026. Please remember to subscribe for the newsletter if you’d like a weekly e-mail update with the latest post links. Please also share this review with others if you enjoyed it. Until next time, have a Happy New Year and a wonderful weekend.
