I made the mistake of reading America's fastest-selling novel
Rebecca Yarros' 'Onyx Storm' starts promisingly but turns into a soulless book AI could have written
Onyx Storm, America’s fastest-selling novel in two decades, begins by cleverly tweaking trigger warnings. Rebecca Yarros says her book has “war, hand-to-hand combat, blood, intense violence, brutal injuries,” and more, including “sexual activities.” Then comes the kicker:
“Readers who may be sensitive to these elements, please take note, and prepare to face the storm …”
With those words, Yarros at once respects and subverts the aim of content warnings. She lets you know what you’ll find in Onyx Storm, the third book in her Empyrean series, while slyly mocking the idea that her strong female readership needs protection from it. Yes, there’s a lot of sex and violence, she suggests, but you’re tough enough to handle it. Go, Rebecca.
If only the rest of the book lived up to that promising start.
Onyx Storm is a powerhouse in romantasy, a genre that melds romance and fantasy and is making publishers hundreds of millions of dollars a year, aided by #BookTok fans on TikTok. “Sextasy” might better describe a category also known as “fairy porn” for its blend of sex and magic.
Stars like Yarros and Sara J. Maas attract frenzied readers to Harry Potter-eseque midnight book signings, often in costume. Many fall into the age group publishers call “new adult,” as though they had just emerged like Athena from Zeus’ forehead. That odd tag seems to mean: people old enough to sign their own rent checks but young enough to get carded at bars.
I’d dipped into romantasy when I read one of last summer’s hits in the genre, C.M. Nascosta’s Morning Glory Milking Farm. More wacky than erotic, it’s a tale of a cash-starved young woman who takes a job milking bulls for their—well, guess. She falls in love with a half-human, half-bull client, and you can guess the result of that, too. There’s a reason why the book falls into a romantasy subgenre called “monster smut.”
But fair is fair: Nascosta looks like Simone de Beauvoir next to Yarros.
Onyx Storm brings back 21-year-old Violet Sorrengail, a student at Basgiath War College, and it’s a sign of its shaky narrative structure that you don’t learn her age until page 386 of a 758-page doorstopper. Violet’s lover and fellow dragon-rider is the brooding Xaden Riorson. He’s damaged his soul by channeling the wrong kind of magic, and he’s turning into a venin, one of the evil creatures out to corrupt dragons and their riders. With companions, Violet sets out to find a cure for Xaden and to recruit allies in the war on venin. In a third plot that makes little sense until near the end of the book, she’s also looking for the long-lost kin of Andarna, her dragon.
This triple-decker storyline didn’t seem to be beyond my ability to appreciate. Onyx Storm has a less off-the-wall plot than Morning Glory Milking Farm, and I enjoy rereading fantasy novels I liked as a child. My favorite novella is Metamorphosis, which involves a man who wakes up one morning to find he’s turned into an insect.
What was beyond my ability to appreciate was the poor writing in Onyx Storm. It only begins with pseudo-intimate first-person narration, mostly by Violet, and an effort to foster immediacy by using the continuous present tense to describe long-ago events.
The pace is sluggish. The characters swarm at you like fire ants that get skimpy development. The worldbuilding is so slight, it doesn’t build a “world” so much as the kind of barren realm Donald Trump might see as needing a casino to add life to it.
Cringeworthy sex scenes
Onyx Storm is both overwritten and underwritten. Yarros doesn’t say that a man turned red as he spoke. She writes: “The man’s complexion favors a tomato as he forces out the words.” Violet says when nervous: “Apprehension slithers between my shoulder blades.” Surely you’ve felt that slithering?
At the same time, the novel doesn’t give you basic facts you need to follow the story. Violet says on page 47 that she pushed Xaden away “after Resson.” Is “Resson” a person? A place? Nearly a hundred pages later it appears that Resson was a battle, but it still isn’t clear why Violet pushed Xaden away after it.
As for the cringe-inducing sex scenes: They run to lines like, “He lifts his head to watch me as his fingers dip beneath the barrier of my underwear.” Wouldn’t even the “newest” adults realize that underwear might be a “barrier” to sex? And have understood if Violet had said simply that Xaden’s fingers “dip beneath my underwear”? What kind of underwear do dragon-riders wear, anyway: bras, thongs, proto-Spanx? Yarros leaves out all the details that might have let you picture what happens as Xaden “growls” and Violet whimpers.
Then there’s the scant context for the 20 or so characters returning from the earlier novels in Yarros’ Empyrean series, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. Those books have a combined 1,000+ pages, and their publisher says they are “best enjoyed in order. “ Translation: If you don’t read those first, you’ll be lost within a few pages.
Perhaps most alarming: You wonder how much of Onyx Storm Yarros wrote. Ever since the Empyrean series began, its readers have been asking on TikTok and Reddit if she worked with an uncredited ghostwriter or made too heavy use of AI. Onyx Storm will do nothing to quell the suspicions.
Words and phrases sound robotic
Certain phrases turn up so often as to appear written by a heavy-breathing robot. They include “my stomach clenches” (eight times) and “my heart clenches” or “chest clenches” (10 times), among other overused phrases.
Most writers have words that they repeat, sometimes unintentionally. And some repetition isn’t unusual in a novel the size of a cinder block. But Yarros’ relentless use of the device—for no apparent reason—is jarring. It’s the most conspicuous use of pointless repetition that I’ve seen in decades as book critic.
Last year @jenny_trout described on Threads an experiment she did with AI:
“I entered the prompt ‘a high-heat romantasy with dragons, in the style of Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J. Maas.’ Within hours, I had an entire novel.”
Onyx Storm is what you might get if you gave AI the prompt: “Write a sequel to Iron Flame that finds Violet seeking a cure for Xaden and recruiting allies in the fight against venin.” It’s also what might result if you were author working at breakneck speed to cash in on your fame while it lasts.
The flat and soulless writing in Onyx Storm hasn’t kept it from selling nearly three million copies and, apparently, enthralling legions of women. Even so, the novel seemed to deserve a different trigger warning than the one has:
“This book reads as though an automaton wrote it. Readers who may be sensitive to that element, please take note.”
Jan is an award-winning critic and journalist who has been the book columnist for Glamour, the book editor of a large newspaper, and a vice-president of the National Book Critics Circle.
You’ll find capsule reviews of 50 of my favorite novels in the 100 Books I Like section of Jansplaining/.
Notes:
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/rebecca-yarros-storms-to-the-top-of-the-charts
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/books/romance-books.html
https://www.tiktok.com/discover/rebecca-yarros-ai
I can’t remember why I came across Rebecca Yarros, probably if you liked this …’ on Amazon. I read the first two books on my kindle and enjoyed them for what they are, rather like having a huge bag of candy floss. I started classes on Virginia Woolf at the same time Onyx Storm came out. Funnily enough, I can’t muster the desire to read it now! Reading this review, I definitely shan’t be rushing to the Kindle store,
I actually enjoyed Fourth Wing, but each subsequent book is a little weaker. At some point my interest in seeing how the story resolves is not going to be enough to motivate me to slog through the books. I'm not sure I would have finished Onyx Storm if I hadn't been using it for a reading challenge where the category was to read a book by an author who shares your name.