Onyx Storm

By Rebecca Yarros

☕︎☕︎

This was tough to get through. The writing felt just as weak as The Last Letter by Yarros, which I read earlier this year and also struggled with. I’m genuinely disappointed—Fourth Wing had me hooked. It wasn’t perfect, but it had enough tension, worldbuilding, and emotional momentum to keep me turning pages late into the night. Iron Flame, on the other hand, brought more cringe than chemistry, and after waiting so long for this release, it just felt like a letdown.

I talked to a close friend about it—we always swap book recs without shame—and even she admitted she was embarrassed to say she was reading this one. That’s not us. We read romance, fantasy, YA, indie—whatever—and we’ve never felt the need to apologize for our tastes. But this book made us pause. That’s how off the mark it was.

What’s especially frustrating is that the core story is genuinely compelling. On paper, the plot has real promise: dragons, war college, rebellion, forbidden love, magical trials—so much potential. But the execution falls flat. It reads like a draft that needed another round of edits, or maybe a more critical editorial eye from the start. The pacing is erratic, the dialogue is clunky, and the emotional beats don’t land because the characters often feel like caricatures of themselves rather than people we believe in.

There’s also a strange tonal inconsistency throughout. One moment, we’re in life-or-death battles with sweeping stakes, and the next, we’re plunged into oddly juvenile banter that undercuts the tension. And I don’t mind spice in fantasy—when it works, it works—but here, it often felt forced or repetitive, like a trope checklist being ticked off rather than anything organic to the story.

I kept reading because I wanted to love it. I really did. The Fourth Wing set up something big, and I was invested in seeing it through. But by the end of Iron Flame, I wasn’t just disappointed—I was tired. Tired of hoping it would click. Tired of waiting for that spark. And honestly, tired of pretending it was better than it was just because I wanted it to be.