By Miriam R. Kramer
On January 21st Rebecca Yarros released her third installment of her five-book Empyrean series, Onyx Storm. Her bestselling novel follows on the success of the first two, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. The series is set at a war college where prospective riders face mortal challenges in bonding with dragons and becoming warriors and riders. Fourth Wing became hugely popular on BookTok, and the series has only increased its readership from that point. Its mixture of romance, fantasy, a military college atmosphere, and convincing world building has captured the imagination of ardent fans, many of whom dressed in cosplay as characters while waiting in line for midnight at bookstores to buy this novel.
In Fourth Wing, Violet Sorrengail, the daughter of the cold General Lilith Sorrengail at Basgiath War College, leaves behind her dream of becoming a scribe in the archives to encounter all the dangers of trying to become a dragon rider organized in squads and wings. With other riders and dragons weeding out the weak with lethal fights, along with deadly obstacle courses, the diminutive, vulnerable Sorrengail uses her wits and shrewd survival skills to try to survive while facing a potential mortal foe, Xaden Riorson. Her powerful wing leader is a military brat whose father was executed for treason by her mother.
As she makes friends and faces unexpected enemies, her main goal is to bond a dragon and survive a first year in which over half of her class will not survive. In the process she finds unexpected love, a love that consumes and shapes her in ways she had never expected. Her journey twists and develops unusually, particularly as she undergoes battle hardening and finds squad and wing mates who celebrate her rise within their first year. Dragon riders are, of course, the equivalent of fighter pilots, bad-asses in the military community. Author Rebecca Yarros draws on her experience as a military spouse to imbue the book with the emotions experienced by those in training for combat.
Iron Flame brings with it the new knowledge of deadly enemies, venin, who also use magic to destroy and enslave humans. With a new adversary before them, the riders and their frenemies, fliers who ride gryphons, band together to face the potential destruction of their already divided territories. They also face dishonest, secretive military leadership, starting a revolution while seeking a way to protect their territory through magic and combat.
In Onyx Storm, Violet Sorrengail, Xaden Riorson, and her squad mates face the necessity of negotiations and politics to gain allies, and deadly choices in whether to save this or that set of civilians from venin. They develop priorities that may result in seeking power at the cost of their souls, or putting those that they love before any other detached military objective.
I never miss a pop cultural phenomenon. After reading Fourth Wing, I saw its potential as an addictive action-adventure fantasy series with a fiery romance at its heart. It had the initial propulsive energy of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, one of my favorite young-adult series, a story that examines war, dictatorship, and survival. That being said, Suzanne Collins created a classic in that genre, with an unexpected, excellent, and complex follow-up, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.
The Empyrean series features more adult and sometimes ridiculous language. This series is aimed at a twenty-something audience wanting all-encompassing love for a gorgeous, lethal man; adventure; and a rebellious, deceptively weak-looking heroine as powerful in her own way as Katniss Everdeen in the Collins series. She, at least, is a strongly defined, relatable character along with her romantic partner. They are the best part of the series, along with her sometimes humorous dragon communications and banter with friends. This book is also feminist, with powers attributed equally to men, women, and others of different sexes.
Many young women identify with this military, book-loving heroine whose mixed emotions draw her to the one she loves fiercely, a man whose secrets threaten her at every turn. I found the first book compelling story-telling with some bad, florid writing, while the second and third book were uneven, bogged down with tedious histories of their imaginary continent as they sought a way to fight their mortal enemies. Yarros’s romance writing, sometimes full of graphic sex, was often so purple and over-the-top that I wondered why I was reading it at all. Then she would sometimes capture realistic-sounding casual dialogue that I could appreciate.
Yarros also uses many traditional story-telling developments you can spot leagues away, although she also includes some surprises and careful plotting. I was reminded too of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, in which the hero develops close friends in a school setting while coming to find that evil and destructive enemies stand in his way. Having worked Harry Potter midnight book parties in Old Town’s former bookstore, Olsson’s Books & Records on S. Union Street, I heard about the midnight releases with fondness. I am always thrilled when anyone gets this excited about reading.
Yarros fits into the same romantasy genre with Sarah J. Maas, a bestselling author whose series Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Crescent City have captured a huge, mostly female teen and twenty-something audience with similar heroines. They too suffer from very uneven, florid, and often bad writing with plots that can move the story along briskly.
Where the Empyrean series, and in particular Onyx Storm succeed, is in developing Violet’s relationship from one where chemistry is hindered by mutual secrets to a searing, intense love heightened by the powerful magic she commands, one that affects readers profoundly. I felt it.
Also, its focus on the intense bonds between riders and dragons echo that love in a non-human way. Their links create an essential force, one of heightening a rider’s ability to wield special powers and wage war alongside scaly, formidable partners who become a part of them. In the exceptional young adult fantasy series His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, parts of people’s souls split off and manifest in shape-shifting animals known as daemons, constant companions that never leave them. Dragons, while often brutal, bolster their humans in the same way. No character is alone with a dragon or a daemon, and few readers want to be lonely.
Is this collection worth reading? I would at least recommend the first novel, Fourth Wing, for readers who love this genre. They will probably find themselves as hooked as the fans who recently waited through the evening for the release of Onyx Storm. Many of the series I just mentioned will probably turn into series on streaming services. Will I read the Empyrean books again? No. The writing, while often vivid, is too inconsistent and often bad, and the plotting can be cumbersome in places. Look at the post-apocalyptic Hunger Games series or the brilliant Philip Pullman trilogy, His Dark Materials, if you want popular, classic writing and a journey worth taking.