Equal parts popular and controversial, the next Fourth Wing book is almost here

The second book in Rebecca Yarros’s bestselling Fourth Wing series, published more than a year ago, ended with a brutal cliffhanger.

So, fans of the saga have been understandably desperate to get their hands on the third instalment in the planned five-book Empyrean series.

With Onyx Storm out tomorrow, the agonising wait is almost over.

The enemies-to-lovers high-fantasy romance books are set in an alternate world full of dragons and magic (and lots of sex). Our protagonist is 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail, the precocious daughter of an army general.

The series is immensely popular: Fourth Wing and its sequel, Iron Flame, have dominated bestseller lists since they were published and were the two most-read books on Goodreads in 2024.

But not everyone has bought into the hype.

Social media is full of reviews from readers who think Fourth Wing is overrated, unoriginal and poorly written. And, as is the case for many writers who suddenly make it big, the internet has picked Yarros apart over various things in recent years.

So, what’s the Empyrean series about? What can we expect from Onyx Storm? And is there any weight to the criticism of its author?

Rebecca Yarros’s success didn’t happen overnight

Yarros had been writing romance for years before she released Fourth Wing in 2023.

The 43-year-old published her first love story, a novel titled Full Measures, almost a decade earlier in 2014. She’s been a prolific writer ever since, often releasing more than one book per year.

Before Fourth Wing, the mother-of-six from Colorado was more inclined towards writing John-Green-calibre adult romances that frequently drew on her experiences growing up in a military family — and later as a military wife — and touched on the lasting effects of war.

The Empyrean series marked her first foray into “romantasy” — a term that refers to books that blend the romance and fantasy genres and often feature “spice” (an online term for sex scenes in books).

It was also her first real, enduring hit.

What is Fourth Wing about? (This is spoiler territory)

As someone who trained her whole life to become a scribe and who has a chronic illness that mirrors the one Yarros lives with, Violet Sorrengail isn’t the sort of person you’d expect to make it out of Basgiath War College alive.

And yet, we meet the Empyrean series’ protagonist at the beginning of her first year at the cutthroat school. There, cadets learn to ride dragons as the ultimate weapons in war against Poromiel, the neighbouring nation Navarre has been fighting for 400 years.

Violet not only survives but thrives at Basgiath, bonding two dragons in a never-before-seen feat and later developing once-in-a-generation lightning-wielding powers. A second set of powers is hinted at, too.

Then there’s the dark and brooding Xaden Riorson, the shadow-wielding son of her mother’s enemy, and her new wing leader. If that’s not complicated enough, Violet’s dragon is mated with Xaden’s, binding the two riders together for life.

What is Iron Flame about? (More spoilers)

Fourth Wing’s sequel sees Violet grapple with the fact that almost everything the students at Basgiath are fighting for is a lie, and that most of the people she trusted knew the truth and kept it from her — including Xaden.

Poromiel isn’t the enemy. That label belongs to the venin, a species of dark wielders who steal power from the earth (which is forbidden) and ride wyverns (a dark dragon variant), whom the leaders of Navarre erased from the history books.

Iron Flame ends with the aforementioned heartbreaking cliffhanger: in a desperate attempt to save Violet’s life during a battle, Xaden sacrifices his soul and begins his transformation into venin, the very evil they’re fighting against.

What do we know about Onyx Storm so far?

Yarros has previously said she’s interested in the way power corrupts, and that we can expect Onyx Storm to focus on whether Xaden will be able to stop himself from becoming the enemy.

No-one has ever come back from turning venin. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible — and that absolutely means Violet is going to try.

In Onyx Storm, she will travel beyond Navarre’s failing wards to find foreign allies to help fight the war against the venin and their wyverns.

Somewhere along the way, we will also be definitively told what her second, long-hinted-at power actually is. (Though, according to Yarros, this manifested in Iron Flame and we all just missed it.)

Yarros has also teased a few telling excerpts from Onyx Storm, which you can find here, here and here.

What do some people dislike about the Fourth Wing books?

As a writer who made a name for herself firmly in the romance space, Yarros is something of a controversial figure among romantasy readers who skew further towards the fantasy end of the spectrum.

Droves of reviewers on her books’ Goodreads pages complain that Yarros’s pivot feels disingenuous and unoriginal at a time when romantasy is one of the fastest-growing subgenres in publishing.

One such review declares Fourth Wing to be “the most blatant cash grab I’ve seen”.

Others accuse Yarros of crossing the line between using tropes of the genre and plagiarism, with readers debating whether Yarros borrowed elements of the Empyrean series from Sarah J Maas’s immensely popular Throne of Glass and Rebecca Aveyard’s lesser-known Red Queen series.

But romantasy doesn’t appear to be that off-brand for Yarros: her romances have long been high-stakes and she is well versed in writing about war, which is one of the hallmark storytelling devices of fantasy.

In 2023, Yarros told The New York Times she was a long-time reader of the genre who had wanted to start writing romantasy ever since sales for her debut novel didn’t meet her expectations.

And the plagiarism accusations are all just online talk in Yarros’s case (the same cannot be said for other romantasy authors).

Then there’s the Israel-Gaza controversy

About a week following the events of October 7, 2023, rumours started swirling online about Yarros’s perceived support of Israel after news emerged her books would be translated into Hebrew.

In response, she shared a statement to her Instagram in which she “condemned violence” and said that “children are not collateral damage”.

She also said refusing Hebrew translations of her books would be tantamount to “a form of [book] banning”, which she “will always stand against”.

Yarros switched comments off on the post, but that didn’t stop content creators from picking her words apart elsewhere.

The Scottish Gaelic controversy followed not long after

During an appearance at Comic Con in New York later in October 2023, the US author was asked to “set the record straight” on the pronunciation of her characters’ names, which are inspired by Scottish Gaelic.

In a video that went viral on TikTok, a young Scottish Gaelic speaker hit back at Yarros for appropriating and then “wildly mispronouncing” the language.

In response to the backlash, Yarros told Variety she was “aware” she got it wrong and was “sorry”.

Despite any and all of these controversies, Yarros still has droves of fans, who are desperate to know…

When will the fourth instalment in the Empyrean series come out?

Although Yarros has confirmed there will be another book coming after Onyx Storm, the answer is: we have no idea when the as-yet-untitled fourth book in the Empyrean series will be released.

But Yarros said in November 2023 that she would be slowing down slightly, for health reasons.

Onyx Storm is out on January 21.

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