'' ONYX STORM '' ONTO : BOOK REVIEW

ONYX STORM By Rebecca Yarros. Dragons and Daggers. The third book in a five-part fantasy series is being compared to Harry Potter has recently come out. 

With magical dragons and the fate of a kingdom hanging in balance in brutal battles, it could well be compared to Game of Thrones too.

I was travelling abroad, browsing a bookstore, when I came across a cluster of people gathered around Fourth Wing, talking passionately about all the good things they had heard about this dragon-rider fantasy and what a must read it was.

In a world of bloggers, heavily sponsored social media and promo overkill, there is still nothing that quite compares to old-school word-of-mouth, especially when it is eavesdropped.

I quickly learned that the third book in the five-part Empyrean series, Onyx Storms, had just been released and was considered the biggest book release since Harry Potter.

I promptly picked up Fourth Wing, which I read in two days, and the almost 900-page sequel Iron Flame, which I finished in three days. I then raced through Onyx Storm, which I found to be the best of the series so far.

Rebecca Yarros is a gifted writer whose engaging storytelling is breeze to read [ in fact, it is hard to take a break from ], filled with vibrant characters, both main and secondary and it is inevitable this series will soon make it to the silver screen.

She also weaves together the story in many like a detective novel, leaving clues to later key findings and making one desire to re-read earlier chapters to look for clues and epiphanies.

Do be forewarned that, although this is an action-based fantasy book series, Yarros' background is writing award-winning romance, and so every once in a while, she throws in a scene open door spice.

Spoiler alert as I give a bit of a background on the first two books, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame.  Protagonist Violet Sorrengail has been trained all her life to be a scribe, like her late beloved father.

The series begins with her mother forcing her to instead go to Basgaith War College in Navarre and train to be a dragon-rider for the battle.

Although frail and terrified, she uses her exceptional brain prowess and a lot of luck to cross the terrifying parapet to reach the college, defeat her athletic opponents, and then succeeding to finally be matched by not one but two dragons.

Her main dragon, Tairn, is the biggest and toughest of the entire species and leader of the dragon pack. He is a lovable, grumpy-old-man type, who powers Violet with a signet, which means he gifts her with the magic of controlling lightning.

The World Students Society thanks T.U. Dawood.