Onyx Storm

Onyx Storm was not bad, it was just sad. It's a sadly readable filler volume in a series built on hype and vibes. The Empyrean series had provocative debut that was a novelistic mess but had a hilariously distinctive voice, and a somewhat promising sequel. Now, it begins its decadence with a mediocre epic fantasy novel interspersed with about two moderately graphic sex scenes that wouldn't scrape 100 kudos on AO3.

The good: The book was well produced and seemed well planned, and not written on a rushed timetable. It's readable, and at a few times enjoyable. The continuity seems better. The line editing was better, although a few confusing sentences and missing dialogue tags slowed down my reading a bit. But there are far too many characters in this series, and I'm reminded of a comment where an author (Rosaria Munda, I think) said that they didn't write talking dragons because that was an automatic way to double a character count.

Onyx Storm turned into a heavy fantasy novel with all the mistakes of a fantasy debut. Instead of concrete, long plotlines that carried through character motivations, worldbuilding details, and large-scale conflicts, we got 10-15 quick stations of the plot. These were small-scale skits - in one case, literally several islands with different quests on them. While this is a easy and rudimentary way to keep a reader hooked, a Gothamesque level of scaffolding remained, and the inability to generate character tension in the first 60% of the book completely ruined any chance of payoff from the ending. The worldbuilding was better than expected for this series, but far below mainstream epic fantasy standards.

The tone of the writing was inconsistent and chaotic. I question how many cooks were in this book's kitchen, especially after the recent details about Entangled's publishing process. Sometimes, particularly in the intimate scenes we'd suddenly get Violet's brash voice from the first book, but more often a dull, repetitive generic fantasy narrative tone prevailed, especially out of place in first person narration.

The romantic stakes were unconvincing and increasingly and desperately contrived, in one case using the single worst plot point I have ever read in a novel in a desperate effort to try to create stakes between Violet and Xaden. The politics were more uninformed, dramatic, transactional, and petty than the Trump administration.

2 stars because I finished it. Add half a star because most of the problems are concentrated in the first half and ending, and a large chunk of the second half (ch 35-55) is actually pretty well sequenced and reads well. Minus a half star, of course for the ersatz Islingtonian ending. Do better.

4/10