The Dragon Rider Smut Book Club Is Now In Session. This Month's Topic: Onyx Storm

I do NOT want to talk about that hockey score pop-up in the frame. I am so disappointed in the playoff results so far! Nevermind that my most beloved Stars lost to the Oilers, because the Oilers are fine and I'd be satisfied to have them win the Cup, but the Panthers are also in the final?!? The Panthers represent the absolute worst of the NHL, everything that I find most toxic about men's professional hockey. Not the players, because they mostly can't help where they play, but the awful management. Okay, I guess I *did* want to talk about that hockey pop-up, but now my mouth is closed about hockey until October!

I have begun annoying/entertaining my family by inserting Fourth Wing taglines into every scenario.

Case in point before Family Movie Night the other night:

A fighter plane without its pilot is a tragedy.

A fighter pilot without their plane is dead.

Welcome to Top Gun.

Catchy, right? And it works in a surprising number of scenarios!

Anyway, for my crimes I spent much of my free time over the Spring semester listening to Onyx Storm while walking my 10,000 steps a day, cleaning house (how are two empty nesters still making this much mess?!?), and sewing, the latter of which led to an interesting moment in which I'd forgotten that my partner was working from home and I was absolutely BLASTING my audiobook, the better to hear it over the noise of my sewing machine. He walked through the room on his way to make himself a sandwich, and was all, "Um, are you listening to porn?"

And then had to repeat himself three times because not only was I indeed listening to porn, but I was listening to it LOUDLY.

I told you after I read the last book that Xaden was going to eventually figure out some more uses for his shadow manifesting signet!

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I'm pretty sure it was Chapter 49...

Fair Warning: the following meeting of the Dragon Rider Smut Book Club is members-only, because there will be all the spoilers for all the books!

Here's my review of Fourth Wing.

Here's my review of Iron Flame.

And here's my review of Onyx Storm!

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Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m pretty sure that Tiktok has damaged my ability to process information, because I genuinely really liked this book?

I mean, quite a lot of it was stupid, and there are too many characters and I refuse to be expected to have memorized the name of everyone’s dragon, and I am SO bored with Violet as the #bestest #specialest #mostdragonriderwhoeverdragonridedest, but I dunno. I drank the Kool-aid. I bonded with my captors. I collaborated with the fascist regime, and I enjoyed my time in Basgiath.

I was still annoyed on every page, though!

The most annoying thing about Violet, even more than her absolute bestestness/most specialness, is how she seems to just really feel all her feelings in her body. Every time Violet hears bad news or thinks a scary thought, we have to hear how her body responds. Are venin on the prowl? Well, then Violet’s throat is going to tighten in response. Does she have to keep yet another boring secret from Rhiannon? That’s sure going to put a pit in her stomach! Poor girl really needs several rounds of EMDR and a consultation with a gastroenterologist.

The thing that I really like about Violet, however, is her moral greyness. She’s actually not that great of a person, and I’m so into it! That BRILLIANT shit she pulls at Faris’ court is legitimately my favorite scene in this entire series, and I'm not sure why every problem is not being solved by permitting Violet to serial killer her way to success. 

The other best scene in the book is when the gang is on the luck island and fortune determines that Trager is shot right in front of their faces, and they just have to stand there and be all, "Ah, fortune... Cool, cool." These scenes have in common the idea that morality is inherently objectively grey in this world, variable according to who wields it, and if Yarros would just lean into that as her overarching premise instead of just a cool bit that she uses every now and then, the series as a whole would be so much stronger, more interesting, and more meaningful. Don't you feel like society as a whole, right at this moment, really needs to sit down and have a discussion about who determines what's right and what's wrong and where that puts those who don't agree with that determination?

Other than the fact that dragons are great and we should all ride them, I have to confess that I’m not actually sure why channeling from the ground is so bad? Yes, venin are assholes, but that seems to be about the venin, not the channeling, because Xaden channels and all it did was make him a sad, wet dishcloth of a man, not an asshole. And yes, depriving the ground and the people on it of their life force to the extent that they die is VERY bad, but Xaden can also channel from Violet’s conduit, we learn, so why can’t they all do that instead?

What I would prefer, and what would make me genuinely interested in Violet/Xaden, would be if channeling from the ground did make you absolutely 100% genuinely EVIL. Like, you can choose from Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil or Neutral Evil, I don’t care, as long as that second part is EVIL. And Xaden can still be obsessed with Violet, even, after he’s evil--actually, I’d prefer it if he was, because that would be interesting! Just imagine him bopping along with the Scooby Gang, helping solve all their mysteries, trying to hide the whole time that he’s evil. It would be so good!

Since I don’t actually care about Violet/Xaden, I also don’t really care about the cliffhanger ending. But I DO hope Violet poisons someone about it, because that would be hilarious.

Also? The Irids are right.

Also also? Now there is a cat, and that is my favorite part.

Very last also: The Basgiath cadets are thirstier for patches than Girl Scouts, lol. I hope they DO pause their war long enough to commission themselves a Quest Squad patch!

Predictions for the next book:

• Violet is also somehow genetically venin and that’s why her parents offered her up to that death cult or whatever when she was a baby--it was to mask that part of her. But somehow she’ll figure out how to reveal it and then integrate it or whatever, and then she can teach Xaden.
• The venin aren’t actually bad. Maybe they’re just enslaved or something to a couple of bad leaders, so Violet and the gang will solve that problem and then everyone, everywhere, will be able to channel allllll the magic.
• I know this contradicts what I just said in the previous point, but my other idea is that Violet will somehow turn out to be inherently Good--I mean, isn't that what the best of the bestiness is all leading to?--and her union with Xaden, now objectively Bad because he's a venin, will work to unite the two sides of The Force to bring harmony to their world. And maybe then even all dragon riders will bond two dragons, a regular war dragon like always and a peaceful Irid that's always going to be talking hippie peace and love into their other ear.

Feel free to use my ideas, Yarros! In payment, just have Violet poison someone!

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I Read Death in Grand Canyon, Because I Needed To Be Told Not To Pick Up a Rattlesnake With My Bare Hands

Photos courtesy of a 2010 trip I took with the kids to the Grand Canyon. There's more than enough to see even when you're standing behind the guardrails and staying on the path!

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Y’all know how obsessed I am with my Special Interest of Human Mishaps in National Parks. I like to tackle it through various lenses--missing people, or search and rescue, or the occasional paranormal theorist--but my favorite is this type of book that simply chronicles every single death, of every circumstance, in one specific national park.

While Death in Grand Canyon isn’t nearly as gruesome as Death in Yellowstone (sooooo many people have been boiled down to their bones in Yellowstone! So many people have been devoured by bears!), it’s still pretty gruesome. I now know so much about how to die of dehydration, and ALSO how to die of hyperhydration. Eat salty snacks while you chug your water, Friends!

As I gleefully announced every time my husband walked by while I was reading this book, the main risk factor for dying in Grand Canyon appears to be being male. Men are the ones pranking their poor daughters by pretending to fall off the rim and then slipping and actually doing so (Greg Austin Gingrich). Men are the ones trying to pick up rattlesnakes with their bare hands. Men are the ones ducking under guardrails to go stand on the rim, and when their young sons warn them that they’re not supposed to go past the rail, they respond, “You gotta take some chances in life,” then immediately step onto an unsupported snowbank and fall 350 feet (Richard Pena). And most of all, apparently, men are the ones insisting on peeing over the edge of the canyon, then getting dizzy and falling to their deaths with their dicks out.

And when men aren’t actively getting killed on their own behalf, they’re actively dragging their women into death instead. I am still absolutely fuming about the talented young athlete Margaret Bradley, whose amazing performance at the Boston Marathon and in her collegiate competitions had her planning for the Olympic Trials… after she visited her buddy Ryan in Flagstaff, of course. He was a runner, too, and had planned a fun fifteen-mile training run for them down and back at the Grand Canyon.

It wasn’t even so much that Ryan’s proposed trail was WAY longer than fifteen miles. Or even that they didn’t carry nearly enough water. Or even that when they got tired and dehydrated and Ryan couldn’t continue, they agreed that Bradley would pound on to their destination and send help. That’s all stupid, but every one of those mistakes could have been recovered from. The mistake that couldn’t be recovered from is when Ryan, who’d sheltered in place overnight, was rescued the next morning by a USGS employee who happened by, HE DID NOT TELL HER THAT HE HAD A COMPANION WHO WAS MISSING. Instead, he was like, “Yeah, I’ve got a buddy down at Phantom Ranch. Can you have someone tell her I’m moving the car?” Like, Dude literally just assumed that Margaret, suffering from dehydration and heatstroke, had blithely run all the way to Phantom Ranch and then just… what? Hung out there without breathing a word to anyone about HIM?!?

You guys. This dude hitched a ride with that USGS employee back to Flagstaff, still without breathing a word about his missing companion, and went to bed. Meanwhile, Margaret’s parents are freaking out that she hasn’t checked in with them, they’re calling everyone, they finally get the police to get ahold of Ryan early the next morning, and he finally tells the authorities the actual story so they can get a helicopter out to look for Margaret.

The coroner’s report stated that Margaret had died about 12-24 hours before the helicopter spotted her. If Ryan had told anyone that his running buddy had kept going and he didn’t know where she was, she wouldn’t have died lost and alone from heat stroke.

I swear, y’all, if you’re a man and you want to go to the Grand Canyon, you need to first make sure it’s your turn with the single brain cell that you all share.

Fortunately, or the book might be too depressing even for me, we also learn about plenty of heroes whose quick thinking and compassion save lives. In 2001, when a couple with four children went hiking down the canyon, they didn’t keep track of their kids and the three older kids ranged far ahead of the parents and toddler. The three older kids happened upon a Boy Scout troop whose leader, Jim Furgo, had just made the decision that the troop was going to forgo their fun overnight at the bottom of Hualapai Canyon because of the weather forecast, and when that Boy Scout leader saw three unaccompanied children hiking towards an area he considered unsafe, he roped them in with his troop, and they all hiked a mile to a much wider area. And so when the flash flood came through the canyon with its 20-foot-high wall of water, the parents and toddler died, but Jim Furgo had saved the lives of every child with him.

I framed it for the vista, so you can't tell that they're not sitting anywhere NEAR the edge. Don't sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon! Your brain can't make sense of the perspective and will make you lose your balance or feel faint as you're getting up.

Although the authors can be a bit glib at times, I appreciated their emphasis on what one can learn from these accounts. Listen to the park rangers and heed all warning signs. Bring more than enough water, and enough salty snacks to accompany them. Don’t hike alone, if possible. Ensure that someone outside your party knows where you will be and when you plan to return. Be mindful of local weather. Don’t sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon, because you’ll stumble or get vertigo when you get up and fall. Don’t use the Grand Canyon as your suicide plan, because it’s traumatic for the people who have to pick your meaty bits out of the dirt.

And don’t try to pick up a rattlesnake with your bare hands. Why are people even doing that in the first place?

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In Which the Fairy Smut Book Club is Punished for Its Sins by Reading A Court of Frost and Starlight

A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Here's my review of A Court of Thorns and Roses.

Here's my review of A Court of Mist and Fury.

Here's my review of A Court of Wings and Ruin.

And HERE'S my review of the piece of shit that is A Court of Frost and Starlight!

Did I just read the fury smut version of the Star Wars Holiday Special?

There are some book series in which I would happily read an entire book consisting solely of the main characters simply bopping around and living their lives. Outlander, for instance, if you omit Brianna and Roger and Ian and Lord John Grey. Percy Jackson, unless it’s more really shitty writing about Will and Nico, who are supposed to be AWESOME and I don’t know how on Earth Riordan managed to screw that up so badly.

ACOTAR is NOT one of these book series. I’m not entirely sure what I just read, but it was… wow. It was a combination of absolutely nothing happening and everything that did happen being really stupid. Is it possible that this novella is actually written by the winner of some sort of fanfic competition? They wrote the best Bryaxis/Tamlin dom/sub fic and as a reward Maas let them write this no-plot piece of fluff? Because seriously, it has ALLLLLL the fanfic tropes, not the least of which is the #foundfamily rhetoric that Maas keeps absolutely smacking us across the face with. I get it! They all found each other, and now they’re all family! But I swear to God they can stop overtly referring to each other as “my brother this” and “my brother that” and “my family blah blah blah” inside their own heads! Is consciously referring to each other as siblings the only way the rest of them can stop themselves from smutting each other as grossly as Feyre and Rhys are? Because if it is, it’s not worth it. I’d rather cringe my way through another entire scene of improbable wall shenanigans than hear the words “my brother” come out of their mental POV mouths one more time.

This novella reinforces my headcanon that everyone in this fairy crew is really stupid and that’s why they had such a hard time during the war. Their jokes aren’t funny, and their wine mom culture is boring. But boy, do THEY think their jokes are funny! You know they do, because every time someone says something that’s supposed to be funny, Maas forces us to pan individually to every single character and get their reaction shot that shows it’s funny. Like, Feyre says something stupid. Rhys smirks and says something horny into her brain. Cas snorts into his wine. Az laughs. Mor smirks but, like, sadly because she has daddy issues. Amrin gives a sly smile and makes a sexual innuendo. Even Elain giggles softly. And on and on and on, world without end, amen.

Everyone’s Solstice gift to each other is equally stupid, except for Elain’s gift to Nesta because books are awesome. I don’t care what everyone got each other or where they bought it, and I have no idea why Maas thought I would. Just saying, but the only time I would ever be interested in that kind of tedious minutiae is if I was writing a #cozy #foundfamily #fluff fic for a winter holiday-themed fest on A03…

I hate Nesta, and nothing short of the most traumatic backstory possible in the next book will ever make me feel sympathetic to her, but I actually am slightly looking forward to reading her POV in A Court of Silver Flames just for a break from this “we managed to save the world even though we made every wrong decision in the process” lovefest.

Also--jeez, are you elitist much, because I think Nesta’s ghetto apartment sounds… fine? I mean, sure, it’s no House of Wind, but it sounds pretty much like my own college apartment back in the day. Like, isn’t Nesta only in her mid-to-late 20s? Everything works in her apartment, the door has plenty of locks, and there isn’t any vermin--dude, it’s FINE! I get that we’re meant to see that Nesta is struggling and traumatized, and the alcohol and gambling and meaningless sex work with that, but adding the implication that she’s punishing herself by living with the poors is bigoted.

Predictions for A Court of Silver Flames:

• PleasepleasepleasePLEASE let Elain turn evil! She is so boring, and I don’t understand why on earth she’s there if it’s not to turn out that she’s suddenly evil and has been all along, mwa-ha-ha.
• OMG if Elain and Tamlin could just fall in love I would CACKLE. Instant 5 stars on Goodreads!
• Literally the only ACOTAR character I like and think is hot is Lucien, and that’s only before he soul-mated or whatever with Elain, and now he acts like a pathetic dog. So if he could, you know, get his groove back in ACOSF I’d love that. If not, I guess there’s always fanfic!
• As for actual plot, I don’t even care. I’m sure it will be something about the mortal queens and that Swan Lake-ish woman or whatever, but that all sounds so boring to me that I literally almost died of boredom while typing it out.

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I Read Feeding the Other Because We Are Entitled to Food

Feeding the Other: Whiteness, Privilege, and Neoliberal Stigma in Food Pantries by Rebecca T. de Souza
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I normally try to live (unsuccessfully, but I try!) by the mantra that I store my books at the public library, ahem, but this is a book that I wish I owned, because I wanted to highlight and underline and marginalia the ever-loving snot out of it!

As a middle-aged, mostly stay-at-home white woman with lots of experience volunteering, with lots of that volunteer experience having taken place with food provision programs, I quite resembled some of the remarks de Souza made about the practice of volunteering at food pantries, and I’ve also witnessed most of what she noted, both good and bad. I did think that her first-person perspectives leaned too hard towards overtly religious programs, because as a devout atheist I’ve mostly worked with secular programs, but in most parts of the country part of the problem IS that most/all food provision programs are overtly religious. Still, I think that spending more time with secular programming would have given de Souza a more nuanced perspective.

But regardless of whether the food provisioning is done through religious or secular means, the point of de Souza’s book is this: are we or are we not entitled to food?

If we ARE entitled to it (and I’d say that we are, as the “life” part of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”), then we should have entitlement programs that enable us to receive it with dignity and enjoy it and thrive from it. If we’re not entitled to it, as we’re currently acting like we’re not, then it becomes the province of charity, and all the meanings that the word “charity” entails.

Here’s what de Souza claims that charity entails:

“Charity depoliticizes the issue of hunger, making it a personal and a private issue, not a public one [...]. Unlike entitlements, charity does not confer upon people guaranteed rights, but rather traffics in the language of gratitude. Charity legitimizes the distribution of substandard products and services and makes it impossible to question the giver or the gift. [...] Charity reinforces social distance and hierarchy between givers and receivers and Us and Them [...]. Consequently, charity silences civic participation and resistance from those on the receiving end by creating subject positions that furthers their political and communicative disenfranchisement.”

Instead, de Souza advocates looking at hunger from a social justice standpoint, in which everyone is entitled to healthy, culturally appropriate, palatable food, and if some of us lack that, then it is because there is something amiss in the structure of our society and it must be addressed.

It’s interesting to see a societal blindspot just laid out like that, and it reminds me of other American ideologies that many people seem to blindly believe without cognition: patriotism, for example, and the fervent nationalism at its extreme end. The idea that with hard work and determination, your dreams will come true. Racism. Xenophobia.

Also, the ideology that “free” food, food you didn’t actively earn the money to buy through your hard work and determination, doesn’t need to be palatable, fresh, “fancy,” or desirable in any way. There’s a collective belief that people can “donate” the weird food they don’t want to eat, or expired food, or the absolute cheapest schlock they can find at the grocery store, and the recipients ought to be grateful to get it. Fuck them if they were craving fresh strawberries, or want to bake the same exact birthday cake their grandma used to bake them, or got food poisoning once and now have a healthy fear of products past their expiration date. If food is an entitlement, then you’re entitled to food that makes you feel satisfied both physically and emotionally. If food is charity, then you get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit.

Although de Souza spoke a lot about this, and about the low nutrient density in the highly processed, industrial food that’s the staple of most food provision programs, and how many people who wish to eat healthier, fresher, more natural food can’t access it through food provision programs, I think there’s much more to be said about how this type of food is also ruining the palates of generation after generation of children. Remember when Michelle Obama put more nutritious lunches in front of schoolchildren and lots of people pitched that fit? I mean, yes, most of that was racism, but there actually was a good bit of food refusal going on with kids who were all, “EW an orange!” and then came home and told their parents who are all, “EW they gave you an ORANGE?!?” Because when you’re used to the flavor and texture of highly-processed, overly salted and high fructose corn syruped industrial food, then fresh, healthy, nutritious food, even though it’s delicious and so much better for you, is not going to taste right in your mouth. And if you keep not choosing it, then it’s never going to taste right in your mouth. And that’s another win for the huge industrial food manufacturers.

If we have to have an ideology, then, let it be that all of us are entitled to food that is healthy, palatable, and culturally appropriate. We’re entitled to fun food. We’re entitled to fancy food. We’re entitled to comfort food. We’re entitled to both locally-grown sweet corn and novelty chicken nuggets, a bite of black truffle because we’re curious to know what it tastes like and a bowl of Top Ramen because that’s the only thing that sounds good when we’re sick. To legislate from that ideology, then, we need to increase minimum wages. We need to lower rents. We need to streamline access to food entitlement programs like SNAP and WIC so that half the purpose is no longer to stigmatize the recipients. We need to slap down political machinations and racist and sexist narratives the second they leave a politician’s mouth.

But also, we’re not nearly there yet so, you know, keep donating to your local food pantry.

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Dragon Rider Smut Book Report: Iron Flame is Stupid But I Read It Anyway

 

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Welcome to the second meeting of the Dragon Rider Smut Book Club! Here's what happened in the first book. 

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In the second book, Violet and Xaden are still having the same fight over and over again.

Awesome.

@romantasysociety 🤦‍♀️ Did you prefer Vi in Book 1 or Book 2? Im seriously looking forward to who she’ll be in Book 3!🤷‍♀️ 🎥 @Tiaslibrary 🥰 📚 @Rebecca Yarros ’s Empyrean Series 🥳 __________________________ #ironflame #ironflamebook #ironflametheories #ironflametheory #ironflamebooktok #ironflamememe #ironflamemerch #ironflamespoilers #rebeccayarrosironflame #ironflame🔥 ♬ original sound - Fourth Wing

Sometimes in a book, a character will make me feel like a literal space alien thanks to relational choices that they make that are so normalized within the book. Like, am *I* the crazy one for thinking that You Must Tell Me Everything is a crazy rule to set for your partner, AND that You Must Ask Me Anything You Want to Know And I’ll Only Tell You Something If You Ask Me is a crazy boundary? This is such a stupid fight to have for most of two books, because these are such stupid relationship rules!

Or am I actually literally a space alien?

I also think Violet doesn’t need to keep the secrets that she’s keeping from her friends, but Fucking Malek, Rhiannon, you are as bad as Violet with wanting to know everything going on inside people’s heads! Can you not give Violet a little space, please? Am I a literal space alien for thinking that it’s crazy for friends who are older than twelve to be this wrapped up in OMG I can tell something’s wrong what is it, um I’m good nothing’s wrong, no seriously tell me I know something’s wrong, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

@emfunnsbooks now you can be all caught up for the emotional devastation that will be onyx storm!!! xoxoxo — #booktokfyp #booksoftiktok #onyxstorm #fourthwingrebeccayarros #ironflamespoilers ♬ original sound - em :)📖💭

Violet really started to also get on my nerves with how often she’s got a tummy ache in this book. Every time someone says something emotionally charged, or she can’t tell her bestie a secret, or there’s a lick of tension in the air her stomach hurts, or it drops, or it squeezes, or sometimes for a change of pace her throat might tighten or she might feel nauseated. I’d have to go back and check, which I really don’t want to do, to see if this is true, but it would be marginally cool and an interesting-ish authorial move if this only started to happen after Varrish tortures her. Like, Yarros has always made a point about how Violet lives in her body, with her constant pain and joint issues (she learned the word “subluxate” for this book, so that’s fun), but it would be interesting if the experience being tortured for several days has caused her to hold that trauma in her body and express it through the one place Varrish couldn’t physically hurt, her tum-tum. It’s very possible that I’m wrong, though, and her tummy hurt throughout the entire book and I only noticed it in the latter half when it started getting on my nerves.

Side note, but I’m glad that we’re not raping people here, even during torture. Yarros gets a bonus star from me for that. Also the torture scene was genuinely good! I mean, it's so sad that Violet was tortured, I guess, but it's amazing how the quality of the book jumps up when she's genuinely in peril and not overpowered and also continually pandered to.

@myproseandcons Be a good friend. Save this to send to your bestie after she’s done with her Iron Flame read through 👯‍♀️ #IronFlame #Booktok ♬ Originalton - 🥀 verenarenafee 🥀

The book’s big climactic battle is stupid, but I’m also giving Yarros a bonus star because it was so stupid but simultaneously fast-paced that I was able to relate it beat by beat to my entire family, who have not read this series, with much hilarity. It was a lot of “okay, so in the first book Violet had this enemy and she killed him, but then the administration secretly brought him back to life and he’d totally changed and was a super good guy, so you’re not going to BELIEVE what happened when they went to check on the ward stone,” and “okay remember how Andarna is the most special because she’s a baby, well it turns out that she’s actually the MOST most special,” and “so then Xaden couldn’t hold out and he was about to die and that means that Violet was going to die and THAT means that everyone in Basgiath was going to die before they could repair the ward stone and THAT means that everyone in Navarre was going to die so you are not going to BELIEVE what he did!” My audience was rolling with laughter. It was awesome.

And after all that the only super important character who died was Violet’s mother, who was underutilized anyway so whatever. I did not buy her redemption arc that she was only being the world’s worst parent so she could secretly be the world’s best parent blech. I wish Yarros had really leaned in and made her some kind of secret venin or venin collaborator--I am so sad to give up my headcanon that she murdered Violet’s father to keep the venin secret, but I guess I can still keep my theory that *something* suss happened regarding his death.

@the.booktok.girls The best hype dragon in the whole book. #booktok #bookish #fantasy #fantasybooks #fantasybooktok #fourthwingrebeccayarros #fourthwingbook #violetsorrengail #tairn #andarna #bookmeme #ironflame #ironflamebook #Meme #MemeCut ♬ original sound - Iowa_wendy

Onyx Storm predictions:

• Violet and Xaden are going to endlessly fight about Xaden’s venin status. They will fight the same fight every time they’re alone, they will say the same things every time they fight, and it will be boring.
• Violet’s father will turn out to have secretly been… something. A rebel working against her mother? Also a venin but he also never used it so he can be a model for Xaden? I dunno, but Yarros is obsessed with Violet’s entire family so there’s definitely more to the father’s story.
• I still think there’s going to be something weird about Violet’s ancestry. Maybe she was adopted or stolen from venin parents or she was a baby venin but forgot or her parents did experiments on her.

Final thought: the infantry was my favorite, and I don’t understand why they only had one scene together and then fell off the face of the Earth. I hope Onyx Storm has more infantry!

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P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Do You Want to be in the Dragon Rider Smut Book Club with Me? We're Reading Fourth Wing!

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So, based on how partly enjoyable but mostly cringe I’ve found the much-hyped ACOTAR series so far, I’d expected that I’d also snark read my way through dragon rider smut the same way I’m snark reading my way through fairy smut.

But slap my face, because I’m actually genuinely enjoying the Fourth Wing series?

Mind you, it’s still VERY snarkable, but whereas ACOTAR was over-the-top cringe and was done no favors by its writing (HOW many times are you going to say the words “high lord,” FEYRE?!?!?), Fourth Wing has dialed the world-building down juuuuuust enough that it comes out on the right side of cartoonish, and though most of its twists and climactic plot beats are obvious, a couple are, happily, genuine surprises!

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Speaking of obvious plot beats… Basgiath War College’s rules are super draconian, which is how you know that Violet lives in the Evil Empire. You also know pretty much the second Violet whips out her family book of folk tales and starts reciting stories about the evil venin and their wyvern familiars that we’re definitely going to see evil venin and their wyvern familiars at some point, as well as probably all the other stuff in that story that I’m too lazy to look back up right now. Other corny tropes: gosh, y’all aren’t going to believe this, but it turns out that even though Violet is SO SMOL and SO WEAK, she is also the MOST SPECIAL dragon rider, because she gets TWO dragons, including the BEST dragon--gaspeth! Also, she’s got a boy best friend who loves her but is smotheringly too overprotective of her, and y’all. There is a guy who Hates her for Reasons, but also he’s hot. But he’s Troubled, and he’s got a History, so gosh, Violet probably better stay away from him!

But I dunno. Whereas Feyre and Tamlin annoyed the snot out of me, like, immediately, I actually like Violet and Xaden a lot. I’m terrified that they’re going to have this same stupid fight that they keep having over and over and over again for the entire series (Why won’t Xaden tell you every single thing in his mind and heart and all his rebellion plans immediately without you even having to ask? Because that’s stupid! And impossible!), and they have the cheeziest sex scenes, but hey. They also have no chemistry, so they’re working with the tools on hand.

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ANYWAY, other than some cornball elements and obvious plot beats, this is a solid fantasy creation. I love the world-building, clunky as it is, with all its nichey little rules about magic and how to act around dragons, etc. I love the over-the-top deadly boarding school vibe--it’s giving Scholomance, which I also love. I love a crafty heroine who goes morally grey to solve her problems. And although I liked Xaden more when he low-key acted like he hated Violet, he’s still overall an interesting character, and I dig that he’s got “secrets” yet to be revealed.

And yes, fine. I LOVE it when there’s a good tag line, and Fourth Wing has the best tag line I’ve read in a looooong time. I want that shit cross-stitched on a pillow. I want to DIY a Xaden Riorsen flight jacket and stick a homemade Iron Squad patch on it.

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Okay, my predictions for the future books, because I am DEFINITELY going to continue this series:

1. At some point, Xaden will penetrate Violet with his shadow thingies. I’m sure that’s the main tag in a billion fanfics already, so Yarros might as well just lean into it.
2. There has got to be some more shit going down with Violet’s family. Is maybe her mom going to turn out to be a venin? Or… her mom sacrificed her dad to them as part of an alliance? Or maybe her mom had an affair with a venin and Violet is actually a venin’s child and her mom murdered her dad when he found out?
3. Something about Andarna, but I really do not know what because other than stopping time twice she’s pretty useless.

P.S. View all my reviews.

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