Onyx Storm

This review includes minor descriptions of some of the events that happen, but no (major) spoilers. Please consider not reading it if you want to go into this book fully blind.

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We're back on The Continent in this third installment of the Empyrean series, and, well... It's clear this is a trilogy being stretched out to lasting five books instead. Let me explain myself.

After the events of Iron Flame, we are left with an edgelord Xaden and ‘I-can-fix-him' Violet. There is no time to mourn the loss of her mother and she has to go straight back to business - finding irids to power the wards. This turns out to be a fetch quest that allows for some more world-building and exploration. Which is a good thing, and some of the best moments of the book happen during this part of the story, but it still suffers from poor pacing. The writing as a whole could do with being more snappy. And because we hop from place to place to find help and irids, it's clear this won't happen on the first attempt, making this portion of the book feel very filler-y.

My biggest gripes with this book is just how non-committal it can be at times, looking for easy ways out. Throughout their quest, it is often repeated that there will be serious repercussions for them. And what happens? Nothing.
Violet has to unlock some books that are earlier on established to have pretty difficult locks. What happens? She unlocks them ‘off-screen'. Easy peasy.
Things like this are just really frustrating to me, because it feels like the start of something consequential to only be resolved in pretty much a single sentence.

Also... This is really petty but, this is meant to be a translated work anyway, so why call the dolphins dolphinum? If this is a fantasy world, no way they have a world so close to our own for this. So either think of a nice fantasy name or just call them dolphins! Panthers don't get renamed, so I think it's the lack of consistency that I find jarring. And mentioning them adds nothing to the plot anyway, so it could have also been left out completely.

What I am also noticing is that, as soon as there is any action that involves actually fighting with the dragons, it is just so chaotic. I have no idea what's going on - who is where, who is fighting what, which dragon belongs to which rider. These are supposed to be the most important moments, but they are such a mess. I can't visualise these scenes at all.
It doesn't help that, during the action, suddenly the POV gets switched around to a bunch of minor characters. That's not really necessary or beneficial at all, when you are wrapping up a book in what is supposed to be the most suspenseful part of the story! Seriously, those chapters could have just been cut out altogether. There's no point to them.

Okay, let's add some positives. Ridoc is amazing. If these books are one day rewritten from his perspective, I'd so buy all of them. The book also adds a bit more intrigue into Violet's character and her parents' plan for her, which was very welcome. The development of her powers was done pretty well too, with plenty of foreshadowing.

I'll continue reading this series just because I really want to see how it ends, but I hope the next one feels a bit more significant to the plot, and with better pacing. And I also cannot wait to see how giving one of your riders the most powerful ability of all is going to impact the rest of the story. It's a daring choice, that's for sure!