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A review by trinityb2021
Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
3.0
3 ⭐️
This was a large improvement over Iron Flame. The fantasy stuff wasn't good but it felt more coherent and the romance was 1000x better. Rebecca Yarros has always been a romance writer so I'm glad she took the time to write good romance instead of whatever was going on in Iron Flame. No one is reading this series for the fantasy and worldbuilding. People may say that, but they're lying.
I think in a vacuum a lot of the political scenes and strategy planning is interesting but in the context of the book they are just boring. There's a scene where they talk to a king of one of the islands that was genuinely super cool. It just doesn't work because there was no set up or build up to the scene and once its done it is never mentioned again. I think what Yarros is missing in her worldbuilding is small things having large impacts and keeping relevant characters in the mix. A lot of the complaints for this book are about how there are way too many new characters that get no development time. The consequences feel meaningless because I don't even know these people.
This book was WAYYY too long. If I read this book on audiobook I would've DNFed it probably. I skipped entire chapters and still understood everything because there is SOOO much bloat. Please cut like 25% of this book. I skimmed the last quarter or so and just read when it seemed relevant.
All of that being said, it was still super fun. The first half is actually really good. There is decent set up and Yarros manages to bring tension into the romance in book 3 which is impressive. I wouldn't change a single thing about how the romance is handled in this book which is saying a lot since it was god awful in Iron Flame. I believe that Violet and Xaden actually like each other and want to be with each other. Although he is getting eerily close to Rhys territory. Between Rowan, Xaden, and Rhys I am mixing things up between them because they're all the same.
If you liked the first book, you'll probably like this. It has a lot of the same issues but it has the same charm and stupid fun that the first book had too.
The word onyx is used 19 times (I noticed it 13 times). Every time it was used it felt like a hate crime.
This was a large improvement over Iron Flame. The fantasy stuff wasn't good but it felt more coherent and the romance was 1000x better. Rebecca Yarros has always been a romance writer so I'm glad she took the time to write good romance instead of whatever was going on in Iron Flame. No one is reading this series for the fantasy and worldbuilding. People may say that, but they're lying.
I think in a vacuum a lot of the political scenes and strategy planning is interesting but in the context of the book they are just boring. There's a scene where they talk to a king of one of the islands that was genuinely super cool. It just doesn't work because there was no set up or build up to the scene and once its done it is never mentioned again. I think what Yarros is missing in her worldbuilding is small things having large impacts and keeping relevant characters in the mix. A lot of the complaints for this book are about how there are way too many new characters that get no development time. The consequences feel meaningless because I don't even know these people.
This book was WAYYY too long. If I read this book on audiobook I would've DNFed it probably. I skipped entire chapters and still understood everything because there is SOOO much bloat. Please cut like 25% of this book. I skimmed the last quarter or so and just read when it seemed relevant.
All of that being said, it was still super fun. The first half is actually really good. There is decent set up and Yarros manages to bring tension into the romance in book 3 which is impressive. I wouldn't change a single thing about how the romance is handled in this book which is saying a lot since it was god awful in Iron Flame. I believe that Violet and Xaden actually like each other and want to be with each other. Although he is getting eerily close to Rhys territory. Between Rowan, Xaden, and Rhys I am mixing things up between them because they're all the same.
If you liked the first book, you'll probably like this. It has a lot of the same issues but it has the same charm and stupid fun that the first book had too.
The word onyx is used 19 times (I noticed it 13 times). Every time it was used it felt like a hate crime.