To save him and the wards failing across the Continent, she has to seek allies in lands no rider has returned from.
- Score
- 78.3
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Steamy
- POV
- first
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
If you liked this, read
What readers think
Readers consistently praise the deepened dragon lore — especially Andarna's arc and the Irid mythology — Xaden's emotionally fraught venin storyline, Ridoc's scene-stealing humour, and a darker, grittier tone that shifts the series firmly from academy fantasy into epic war narrative. The opening and closing quarters are widely called the book's strongest sections. Common criticisms target a bloated, directionless middle, an overcrowded cast with too many similarly-named kingdoms and rulers, abrupt multi-POV chapters at the end that feel like whiplash, and a memory-wipe resolution that echoes Iron Flame's ending a beat too closely. Pacing frustrations are the dominant note in mixed reviews, with many readers feeling the expansion from trilogy to five-book series is visible in the page count. Overall consensus sits around 3.5–4 stars — fans of the world remain invested, but fewer readers call it better than Fourth Wing.
Read it if
- · Fans of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame who are committed to the series and need to see Violet and Xaden's story through
- · Readers who want dragon-centric fantasy that escalates from academy drama into genuine epic-war scope
- · Anyone who loves established-couple angst where the stakes are life-or-death rather than romantic uncertainty
Skip it if
- · You haven't read the first two books — Onyx Storm opens with no recap and is incomprehensible as a standalone
- · You find slow, politically tangled middle sections and large ensemble casts frustrating rather than immersive
- · You are sensitive to on-page violence, animal death, graphic injuries, or explicit sexual content
If you liked this
- · For fans of A Court of Wings and Ruin — a third-book that trades intimate slow-burn for high-stakes alliance-building and world-ending revelations
- · For fans of Throne of Glass (Empire of Storms) — a mid-series instalment that expands geography and cast significantly while setting up a larger endgame
- · For fans of From Blood and Ash — morally conflicted hero, devastating secrets, and a heroine who must save both her love and her world simultaneously
- · For fans of Shadow and Bone (Ruin and Rising) — a quest across a broadening world with a protagonist carrying a secret power that could change the war's outcome
In this series
Part of The Empyrean — read in order:
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