Onyx Storm
Rebecca Yarros, 2025
Dragons, a war college, and a rider who plans to outthink everyone. Violet leaves the wards to find allies — and a secret big enough to break them. A tense, war-shadowed fantasy romance that moves with dread and longing, driven by Violet's scheming voice and the pull between love and death.
Feels like dread and longing. About war, love and death.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy fantasy romance with military stakes, dragons, and a heroine who tries to outthink her enemies. The mood leans hard into dread and death, so it is not a light, easy escape.
Why read it
The draw is the push beyond the failing wards, where Violet's wit, loyalty, and attachments carry a war story that keeps love close to loss.
A page from the book
When the danger is no longer outside the walls but inside them.
No more time for uncertainty. Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust. Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him. Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth. But a storm is coming…and not everyone can survive its wrath. Rebecca Yarros.Before dragons, Yarros published more than twenty contemporary romances; the Empyrean series, beginning with Fourth Wing, was her first fantasy.
Books that feel like this
More by Rebecca Yarros
Threshing Day
Rebecca Yarros, 2023
A dragon-riding academy where survival is a test, secrets are currency, and the wrong attraction can be as dangerous as the skies.
Fourth Wing
Rebecca Yarros, 2023
A bookish cadet is forced into a lethal dragon-rider quadrant, where dragons choose their riders, allies become rivals, and the only way out is to survive.
Iron Flame
Rebecca Yarros, 2023
A dragon rider faces her second year at a war college where love, loyalty and lethal secrets test every bond she has.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Onyx Storm for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy fantasy romance with military stakes, dragons, and a heroine who tries to outthink her enemies. The mood leans hard into dread and death, so it is not a light, easy escape.
- What is Onyx Storm like?
- A tense, war-shadowed fantasy romance that moves with dread and longing, driven by Violet's scheming voice and the pull between love and death. Feels like dread and longing. About war, love and death.
- What should I read after Onyx Storm?
- If you liked Onyx Storm, try Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Laini Taylor), Inheritance (Christopher Paolini) and Tower of Dawn (Sarah J. Maas).
A taste of the feed
It is very hard to see the thing everyone else already sees.
It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry ‘Monster!’ and looked behind him.
Daughter of Smoke & Bone · Laini Taylor
Why one man is buried and the man beside him is not.
Who is it who decides that one man should live and another should die? My life wasn’t worth any more than his, but he’s the one who’s buried, while I get to enjoy at least a few more hours above the ground. Is it chance, random and cruel, or is there some purpose or pattern to all this, even if it lies beyond our ken?
Inheritance · Christopher Paolini
Kindness that expects nothing back is the rarest kind.
A gift. A gift from a queen who had seen another woman in hell and thought to reach back a hand. With no thought of it ever being returned. A moment of kindness, a tug on a thread.
Tower of Dawn · Sarah J. Maas
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