Onyx Storm: Chapter 48-50

[penwalla]

Sorry about my long absence, I was on vacation and then at work making up for all the days off. Regardless.

We open to a quote from some text about the venin that lets us know the venin are hiding among us. This has been beaten into the readers by this point, and I am still waiting for an actual reveal where we find out whomst these hidden venin are. I'm betting it is Aetos, because Yarros hates subtlety, but it would be fun if it was someone Violet was friends with. Ridoc or Rhiannon would be good, or even Sawyer. If it is one of them, I'm betting it'll be a woman Violet has had beef with in the past. Imogen or Cat.

Violet is drying her hair as she reads books Tecarus has sent her about the venin.

Cat got it right on the first try.

Imogen followed quickly after.

Kai singed the ends of his spiky black hair.

Dain, Bodhi, Rhi, Ridoc… everyone eventually mastered one except me. Even Aaric, who has yet to manifest a signet, managed the intricacy of the lesser magic.

Whatever. We’re here for two weeks. Eventually I’ll get it right, and if I don’t, then that’s why we work in squads. I don’t have to be good at everything.

This is character development for Violet, though it does feel like it's coming out of nowhere.

Violet is also charging a new, bigger conduit. As she sits there, someone knocks on her door. She tells us it is either Rhiannon or Brennan, so we know it's certainly not one of them. Xaden?

Yeah, Xaden. Naturally. Violet mentioned she was wearing a sheer nightgown, so it has to be Xaden.

Xaden and Violet make out, then they talk long enough for Xaden to tell her he's been controlling himself beyond the wards, and he's made it for 73 days.

He nods. “I’m not ignoring my fate. I know there will come a point in time where I’ll become more it than me.” He swallows. “But as dangerous as hope is, you’re right— I have to fight for this. I think I’m stable for now, and I know it’s only day seventy—”

“What is this magical number you have?” Gods help me if we’re looking at triple digits.

He tucks my hair behind my ears. “Seventy-six. It’s twice Barlowe’s longest stretch without draining after his first significant channeling— the cliff incident. I didn’t want to get your hopes up, but I figure that making it seventy-six days will indicate that I can stall the progression.”

Okay. Sure. First of all, why set up Violet keeping Barlowe alive for interrogation and having her do all this research only to have Xaden figure this out offscreen? Yarros does this often. This book is full of individual plot elements that don't connect together or pay off in any meaningful way. More and more I believe in the accounts I've read of books by this publisher being written piecemeal by editors instead of by one author. Second, it's been like two chapters since Xaden left. I'm begging you, Yarros or whoever wrote this, let a problem exist for longer than a couple chapters.

The rest of this chapter is them having sex. Let's move on.

Chapter 49 is one long sex scene.

I'm not going to recap those--there's not anything interesting there. They love each other and they have hot desperate sex that's like all the other times they had sex. Yay.

Chapter 50.

Violet is having her dream about the Sage again, except this time she's is trying to protect a mysterious 'her'.

The fuck I will. Anger cuts through the fear, and I slam my left hand to the ground. Rain runs off my flight jacket and courses over the edge of my relic in rivulets as I flex my fingers in the wet grass, splaying my fingers wide.

My hand… it doesn’t look like mine— There it is. Power courses through the earth beneath me, ready and willing to annihilate their forces if I have the courage to let go of the impossible dreams I’ve clung to and accept the fate Zihnal has dealt me.

I only have to reach, and they’ll be safe. She’ll be safe.

Oh, so this is Xaden's memory of turning.

Violet wakes up in bed with Xaden, who is having a nightmare. She wakes him and tells him about her dream--but it's Xaden's dream! Hah, I was right. That was decently telegraphed. We then learn that Violet had another dream earlier in the book that was actually Maren's dream, and therefore her secret second signet is being a dream-walker--aka an intinnsic.

I don't...dream walking is forbidden but Dain's memory reading isn't?

Violet panics about this, because suddenly signets are reflections of her character again. She's freaking out about it and goes to talk to Maren, confirming that she's not just a passive observer in dreams, but is able to affect them. Then, Tairn interrupts them to let them know a horde is approaching from the west.

Okay. That's the end of that chapter.

So...wait, have all Violet's weird dreams actually been Xaden's dreams? Because that doesn't make sense. That has not been set up at all.

Honestly, Violet doesn't need any more powers. She needs problems that linger and that she can't solve and that have consequences. Can't wait for the plotline in book 4 about Violet learning to control her dream powers. It also feels ridiculous for it to be a forbidden power that she could be killed for. One, how would anyone even know? Two, we already have Xaden as both a venin and an intinnsic, so we don't really need this element. It's just more stuff to make Violet the most special rider of all time.