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A review by abby_ace_of_books
Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
2.0
This book wasn't even fun to hate...
I'm a certified Fourth Wing hater, to which you may be asking why I forced myself to suffer through all three books. The answer? A mix of FOMO and also, sometimes I like to read things that I know I won't enjoy because I need to direct my anger somewhere and with popular books, the chances of my negative review being seen by the author is very, very unlikely.
Plus, I want to be an informed hater.
This book wasn't even fun to hate. I was admittedly a bit excited going into it because I'd seen people mention it was heavier on the fantasy than previous books in the series. AND I was prepared to defend it from people who said it was too much filler because I just assumed they weren't familiar with fantasy...I was wrong.
I do want to point out that I went into this relatively blind; I reread my annotations/reviews of the previous books and I watched a whole two summaries of them (you should be proud of me for that alone). There's a character list at the beginning of the book that told me absolutely nothing because it contained a whole eight characters...if you're going to include a dramatis personae, at least include all of the characters. I would rather include more characters and forget the stupid fancy graphics.
I've already done a whole lot of complaining, and I haven't even begun to discuss the contents of the book itself yet. Why? Because I retained about 10% of it and the other 90% was pretty much useless.
Basically, the entire middle 600 pages of the book are spent traveling around the world to "find allies" and "look for Andarna's family." This section absolutely did not need to be 600 pages. Do any of the alliances actually work? I'm not even sure because, let's be honest, are any of these "armies" actually going to be helpful? They don't have dragons, they just have foot soldiers that are going to be absolutely demolished the second the step within 100 yards of a venin. I understand that we're at the point in the series where expanded worldbuilding is important, but not when your plot hinges entirely on extremely repetitive "political visits" that almost always end with something bad happening.
Spoiler Warning: we fight some random people and Dain gets beat up...we go visit Xaden's family and Garrick gets poisoned (although Violet finally learned upon the fourth time of being served poison that maybe she shouldn't consume it)...we got to Gambling City and a side character is killed for absolutely no reason besides the shock factor
With the first two books, there were at least a few interesting scenes that I could appreciate. With this book, there were a few tiny details and implications that I was mildly excited for? Namely:
- possible Ridoc corruption arc
- more Aaric page time
- we're no longer hating Dain (although the turnaround gave me whiplash)
- that's it...I thought there was more...but there isn't
The ending? Really anticlimactic and confusing? It might be a me rushing to finish the book thing, or maybe it's me not caring about the book thing, but the last 20% was really boring for an ending to a book.
Also, I know other people have already made the joke about the sheer amount of characters, but my gosh I didn't remember anyone. I don't care about any of the main characters, and the side characters I tolerate rarely ever receive page time.
As it stands, Aaric and Ridoc are the only characters I actually care about. Sloane, too, but she's been irrelevant for forever.
I'm hoping Bodhi is venin and that Ridoc gets a corruption arc.
Everyone else can die for all care (especially Violet because her POV is so bland).
The reason I rated this book lower than the other two even though I didn't hate it as much is for that reason: there wasn't even enough for me to complain about.
In the other two books, Violet and Xaden were extremely frustrating and annoying, the plot was mostly based on miscommunication, and there were so many stupid lines that I could highlight and laugh about because they were so bad.
I don't know what it was about this one, but there just wasn't enough substance for me to make fun of. Violet and Xaden were...surprisingly tame in their lustiness. Violet's stupidity was annoying, but somehow more subtle.
I read this for the purpose of being angry at something productive. This book failed to give me that outlet.
There's probably more I could say about this book, but I genuinely want to forget I ever read it. I'll take notes on it and I'll read the next book, but wow...what a miserable five days of my reading life.
2/5
1 point for Ridoc
1 point for Aaric
I'm a certified Fourth Wing hater, to which you may be asking why I forced myself to suffer through all three books. The answer? A mix of FOMO and also, sometimes I like to read things that I know I won't enjoy because I need to direct my anger somewhere and with popular books, the chances of my negative review being seen by the author is very, very unlikely.
Plus, I want to be an informed hater.
This book wasn't even fun to hate. I was admittedly a bit excited going into it because I'd seen people mention it was heavier on the fantasy than previous books in the series. AND I was prepared to defend it from people who said it was too much filler because I just assumed they weren't familiar with fantasy...I was wrong.
I do want to point out that I went into this relatively blind; I reread my annotations/reviews of the previous books and I watched a whole two summaries of them (you should be proud of me for that alone). There's a character list at the beginning of the book that told me absolutely nothing because it contained a whole eight characters...if you're going to include a dramatis personae, at least include all of the characters. I would rather include more characters and forget the stupid fancy graphics.
I've already done a whole lot of complaining, and I haven't even begun to discuss the contents of the book itself yet. Why? Because I retained about 10% of it and the other 90% was pretty much useless.
Basically, the entire middle 600 pages of the book are spent traveling around the world to "find allies" and "look for Andarna's family." This section absolutely did not need to be 600 pages. Do any of the alliances actually work? I'm not even sure because, let's be honest, are any of these "armies" actually going to be helpful? They don't have dragons, they just have foot soldiers that are going to be absolutely demolished the second the step within 100 yards of a venin. I understand that we're at the point in the series where expanded worldbuilding is important, but not when your plot hinges entirely on extremely repetitive "political visits" that almost always end with something bad happening.
Spoiler Warning: we fight some random people and Dain gets beat up...we go visit Xaden's family and Garrick gets poisoned (although Violet finally learned upon the fourth time of being served poison that maybe she shouldn't consume it)...we got to Gambling City and a side character is killed for absolutely no reason besides the shock factor
With the first two books, there were at least a few interesting scenes that I could appreciate. With this book, there were a few tiny details and implications that I was mildly excited for? Namely:
- possible Ridoc corruption arc
- more Aaric page time
- we're no longer hating Dain (although the turnaround gave me whiplash)
- that's it...I thought there was more...but there isn't
The ending? Really anticlimactic and confusing? It might be a me rushing to finish the book thing, or maybe it's me not caring about the book thing, but the last 20% was really boring for an ending to a book.
Also, I know other people have already made the joke about the sheer amount of characters, but my gosh I didn't remember anyone. I don't care about any of the main characters, and the side characters I tolerate rarely ever receive page time.
As it stands, Aaric and Ridoc are the only characters I actually care about. Sloane, too, but she's been irrelevant for forever.
I'm hoping Bodhi is venin and that Ridoc gets a corruption arc.
Everyone else can die for all care (especially Violet because her POV is so bland).
The reason I rated this book lower than the other two even though I didn't hate it as much is for that reason: there wasn't even enough for me to complain about.
In the other two books, Violet and Xaden were extremely frustrating and annoying, the plot was mostly based on miscommunication, and there were so many stupid lines that I could highlight and laugh about because they were so bad.
I don't know what it was about this one, but there just wasn't enough substance for me to make fun of. Violet and Xaden were...surprisingly tame in their lustiness. Violet's stupidity was annoying, but somehow more subtle.
I read this for the purpose of being angry at something productive. This book failed to give me that outlet.
There's probably more I could say about this book, but I genuinely want to forget I ever read it. I'll take notes on it and I'll read the next book, but wow...what a miserable five days of my reading life.
2/5
1 point for Ridoc
1 point for Aaric