This is a spoiler-free review! You can read my reviews of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame on my blog, now!
Does Rebecca Yarros think she is Carrie Bradshaw and is being paid by the word? Is there a word count that her publisher is making her reach? There is no other explanation on why this book was nearly 800 pages long and yet there was maybe one instance of an actual plot point occurring. If you cut out the first 700 pages of this book and only kept the last six chapters, you would not be missing out on anything, other than the migraine the other sixty chapters that this book would have given you. I do not even know what I expected from this book considering Iron Flame destroyed some of my brain cells, but this installment was full of... nothing. Every "twist" that took Violet fifteen chapters to figure out was predictable and frankly, lame.
I will admit that the vodka cranberries I had on the plane while reading this book may have influenced how I felt about the ending, but good grief I was wishing I was one of the people who fell off of the parapet by the time I was through with this third installment. Yarros continues her attempt to write fantasy while it is clearly evident she wants to write a romance, but wants to be in the fantasy market. I can think of no other alternative on why she and her writing skills have attempted to take on a fantasy series, let alone planning to make it five books. What more could she possibly have to say? This series definitely should have been a trilogy or four books at the absolute maximum. When authors waste hundreds of pages full of paragraphs upon paragraphs of the same descriptions over and over again, it makes the story redundant and cheap.
Echoing my statement from my review of Iron Flame - Xaden is still the only character worthy of reader interest. Every single other character seems to just float around the plot without contributing, with the exception of Violet, when she is not breaking her bones or falling off her dragon every other chapter. Sure, the side characters provide some comedic relief, but every time one of them is injured or literally dies, I am unaffected - I should be sobbing my eyes out and be attached to these characters, but Yarros makes them so one-dimensional that you forget their name when you get to the next page.
Violet Sorrengail, have you heard of common sense? Have you heard of context clues? Have you heard of self-preservation? I continue to question this girl's intelligence at every turn, and she continues to quite literally throw herself off of her dragon whenever it is convenient for her and her own agenda. Her allegiance to Xaden is admirable, but that is honestly the only good quality she has going for her lately. Her family was such a large presence in the second book, and yet in this third installment, they became pushed to the side, so much so that at one point, I forgot their names. Yarros continues to build up these scenarios, only to abandon them in favor of having Violet and Xaden engage in yet another break up that will last for three chapters until they break another table.
I still cannot stand the way that all of the dragons speak to one another and how they speak to their riders. It feels unnatural and the conversation never flows organically, making the writing feel choppy or surface-level. I literally do not care if any of these characters or dragons live or die at this point simply because the story is being dragged out - nearly three thousand pages later and we have moved a pebble compared to the mountains of plot that should have been rolling since Fourth Wing. I simply cannot even begin to imagine what torturous writing is in store for readers in the final two books of this series. My only option to to keep reading so I can put this series to rest and never think about it again.
Once again - stop making everyone's second signet so obvious!!! It is not making the reading journey fun when I can literally identify major reveals from miles away, and have to read 600 pages to get to the point when even the main character does not realize what her second signet is. I am so over the bare minimum writing capabilities of this author, and I genuinely cannot believe this went through rounds of editing and this is what they thought was worthy of publishing. Sure, if you push aside the entry-level writing and two-dimensional plot and are here solely for the vibes, I can see how you could rate this book higher. But as a veteran of fantasy and someone who has read her fair share of subpar books to epic fantasies, Onyx Storm proves yet again that Yarros is in over her head.
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