Onyx Storm: Chapter 31

[penwalla]

Guardians are no longer permitted to dedicate children in service to their favored deity. The decision to serve the gods for life must be made after the age of majority and of one’s free will.

—Public Notice 200.417 Transcribed by Racel Lightstone

Yarros, you cannot rely on the opening quotes to do all the worldbuilding for you.

Violet is freaked out by the silver-haired temple attendants, because she is the only silver-haired person in the world as far as she knows. She and the others are led to the plaza outside the temple. The attendants are all armed--I'm guessing these are the attendants of the war goddess? Tairn circles overhead.

The Unnbriel guards produce three of their own warriors for a trial by combat, which they need to pass to meet with the queen. Aaric tries to step in and fight, revealing that he in fact speaks Unnbrish, but Xaden overrides him because he's objectively a better fighter.

As Xaden prepares for the fight against a massive Unnbrish warrior, Violet panics over him. She doesn't want him to get hurt and is worried about his chances without his signet. It's fine that she's worried, but I will point out that the book seems to waffle on whether the riders are competent at hand to hand all the time, even though they canonically are 1. allowed and encouraged to kill each other and 2. have specific rules that mean they have to fight each other without their signets frequently. Every rider except Violet "I poisoned all my opponents" should be fine at hand to hand combat or dead.

Violet's discomfort is apparent to the elderly priestess of Dunne presiding over the ceremony.

“You don’t agree with Dunne’s ways,” the priestess surmises, her voice cracking with age as she looks down at me with dilated pupils. Oh great. Only Dunne herself knows what they’re ingesting beyond those pillars.

“I find it a poor test of character,” I reply.

Do you, Violet? Do you? Do you, a student of Basgiath's murder college who has never meaningfully protested against their culture of KILLING EACH OTHER, find it a poor test of character?

No, I will never be over the fact that that plot point was just dropped as soon as it stopped being useful for drama for Yarros.

The priestess agrees with Violet when she tells her that Xaden is fighting without his greatest weapon. Why are you telling the enemy this, Violet? What purpose does that serve? You have no reason to believe this woman is on your side! But we know the priestess will be good because she sends Dain to join Xaden in battle and then tells Aaric to chill out, it's not his time to fight yet.

Anyways, the priestess then addresses Violet as if she is one of the temple's children, and Violet tells her that she chooses him (Xaden or Tairn). At least Tairn got mentioned this time. Violet is then also chosen to go and fight.

Chapter end.

I don't really understand what's going on with Violet and the goddess Dunne yet, but I also don't really care because it's ultimately just another way of making Violet special. Yarros hates to have Violet struggle, after all. It just feels unnecessary. Violet doesn't need to be more special or have more powers, what she needs is to have some actual problems that she has to struggle against so that the book isn't just her having pointless relationship drama and being a bystander to stupid political drama. Yeah, the plot of this book is so far Violet trying to find the seventh dragons to kill venin and cure Xaden, but there's not really been any setbacks or struggles. It's just a travelogue.