I enjoyed that right out of the gate we are into the action and drama. Violet steps into her power, literally and metaphorically in this story and uses her intelligence to have the upper hand in so many situations. Some things she was a little slow on the update of, but I have re-read and obsessed over Rebecca's writing in these books (and I have great pattern recognition) so I picked up on things faster than Violet. I enjoy being able to do that, because I am a dummy reader with aspirations of a scribe, so I like when stuff is laid out easily for me to guess. Being right with plot theories is akin to winning at solitaire for me. I was surprised several times in this book (not just plot twists, but also little easter eggs like

Ridoc and Aotrom (his dragon) being in a prank war and them being the same age!!

), which kept the story engaging for me. The character development in many of the side characters and even in our main ones was well executed to me. I could literally go on and on with all of the things I think were done so incredibly right in this book. If I marked things in the "could have been better" column, it would be that there was some repetitiveness from Iron Flame, the Senarium meetings were a little boring (canon to real life), and I would have loved to have spent a little more time on the islands they were exploring. Those are incredibly small complaints and only ones I would give if someone asked me to.

Onyx Storm is probably my favorite (so far) of the 3 in The Empyrean series. The little "plot holes" in other books start to get filled in Onyx Storm (also I would like to say that - THERE AREN'T PLOT HOLES IN AN UNFINISHED SERIES) and seeing the world unfurl further and seeing the setups for the story's continuation is really satisfying. Xaden Xaden'd SO DAMN HARD in this book. If you didn't love him before, you'll surely fall head over heels for that man now.