Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

You ever pick up a book with the full intention of pacing yourself—reading a few chapters a night, spreading the joy?

Yeah, that didn’t happen here.

From the moment I cracked open Onyx Storm, I was gone. Rebecca Yarros threw me into a whirlwind of magic, grief, loyalty, betrayal, and dragons, and I didn’t surface until my eyes were dry and my soul mildly scorched. If Fourth Wing made me curious, and Iron Flame made me invested—this one shattered and rebuilt me.

And honestly? I’m still not okay.

👉 Read the full Empyrean guide here – books in chronological order, reading tips & more.

Quick Review: Spoiler-Free Fire

Onyx Storm delivers exactly what you want from a third book: expansion. Bigger stakes, bolder moves, rawer emotion. Violet’s no longer the unsure cadet from book one—she’s battle-tested and emotionally cracked wide open. And the plot? Twists on twists on stormy twists. If Iron Flame was the storm building, Onyx Storm is where it hits.

I laughed. I cried. I screamed into a pillow.

Book Title: Onyx Storm
Series Name: The Empyrean Book Series
Author: Rebecca Yarros

Onyx Storm– Audible Audiobook

Onyx Storm – Hardcover

Throne of Glass: From the # 1 Sunday Times best-selling author of A Court of Thorns and Roses

Book In Chronological Order Ratings :

Spice Level: 3.5/5 – Still low-key on the scale, but it’s the emotional intimacy that gets you. Violet and Xaden? Their connection runs deeper than steam.
Emotional Damage: 6/5 – My heart is dust. Beautiful, glittering dust. I’m already bracing for book 4.
World-Building: 5/5 – We go beyond the school walls. Politics, rebellion, dragon history, magical theory—it’s dense, but never boring.
Characters: 5/5 – Ridoc, Imogen, Sloane, Dain. Everyone is layered. No one is filler. I cared. I still care.

Why Onyx Storm Won Me Over

This book doesn’t pull punches—and I didn’t want it to. It deepens the emotional arcs, not just for Violet and Xaden, but for nearly every side character we’ve come to love. The world-building explodes (hello, new lands!), and we finally feel the scope of the war outside Basgiath.

But more than that—it’s the quiet moments that left marks on me. The ones where grief leaks through like water under a locked door. The flash of humor between friends when everything else is falling apart. The sense that even in the middle of all this chaos, found family still matters.

And yes, Broccoli. 100 stars for Broccoli.

Themes That Stuck With Me

When I look back on Onyx Storm, what stays with me isn’t just the plot twists (though they hit hard), or the dragons (who are brilliant, obviously), or even the cliffhanger (which emotionally wrecked me in the best way). What truly lingers are the deeper threads—the human things, the messy things—that wove themselves into the fabric of this story and refused to let go. These weren’t just fantasy themes. They were personal.

Grief, in all its forms.
This book doesn’t just flirt with grief—it dives in. And not just the obvious kind, the loss-of-someone kind. We see grief for lost dreams, lost identities, lost versions of ourselves. Violet is grieving who she used to be, who she thought she might become, and who she might have to become now. Andarna’s departure? That gutted me. Watching Violet learn to breathe through that ache—rather than push it down—was quiet, but powerful. The way Yarros writes grief here feels lived-in. Familiar. Like the kind that sneaks up on you on a random Tuesday.

The complexity of loyalty.
This one hit me hard. Loyalty in Onyx Storm isn’t just black and white. It’s messy. Sometimes it means making choices that hurt the people you love. Sometimes it means standing by someone even when you’re furious at them. Watching characters like Dain and Xaden wrestle with what loyalty looks like after trust is broken? That felt real. No one gets a free pass in this book. Everyone has to earn it. And I appreciated that. It reminded me how complicated love becomes when you’ve been through hell together.

Identity and transformation.
So much of this book is about the people we become when we’re forced to change—by war, by pain, by power. Violet is not the same girl we met in Fourth Wing, and that’s the point. She’s stronger, yes, but she’s also heavier. More careful. More tired. And Xaden—his arc absolutely wrecked me. His silence, his fear, the way he disappears into himself? I felt that in my bones. They’re both trying to figure out who they are when the world keeps reshaping them. And maybe that’s what growing up really is—learning how to carry the weight of everything you’ve survived.

Control vs. surrender.
This is a quieter theme, but it’s everywhere if you look for it. Characters grappling with how much they can control—how much they should control—and where to let go. Violet’s magic. Her relationships. Her need to fix everything. I saw myself in that, more than I expected to. The moments where she finally lets herself trust, or cry, or just be? Those were the moments that cracked me open.

Hope, in the middle of wreckage.
And maybe most importantly, Onyx Storm doesn’t give up on hope. Even when things fall apart. Even when it hurts. There’s always someone willing to fight one more time, to love one more time, to believe one more time. That’s what makes this series special. Not just the dragons or the politics or the romance—but that glimmer that no matter how bad it gets, the light still finds a way in.

Why This Book Was Exactly What I Needed

I didn’t go into Onyx Storm expecting to be cracked wide open. I just wanted dragons, a bit of angst, maybe some snarky banter. What I got was something that felt like it was written for the part of me that still believes fantasy can say something—about grief, about loyalty, about choosing your people over your past.

This book made me feel seen in that oddly comforting way that only epic fantasy sometimes can. It reminded me why I fell in love with reading in the first place: the thrill of a new world, the ache of a slow-burn redemption arc, the quiet gasp when a line hits too close to home.

If you’ve ever held your breath waiting for a character to forgive themselves…
If you’ve ever closed a book and just sat there, emotionally wrecked but weirdly grateful…
If you want to believe that even in the darkest corners of war, there’s still space for softness, for love, for hope…

…then Onyx Storm will find you the way it found me.

And yeah—there are dragons. But this story is so much more than that.