To start with I acknowledge that I am not the target audience for this book.
Last year I read the first two in the series, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, as a challenge to myself to read a different genre, and I really enjoyed them.
This book, the third, has been really hyped over the two or three months prior to its publication, and I was one of the people really looking forward to seeing what happened after the cliff hanger at the end of Iron Flame .
Before I read it I saw some reviews where people were stating that they were struggling to catch up with the plot or make sense of where the story picked up immediately after the end of the last book.
Some even went as far as to say they had reread Iron Flame just to make sense of the start of this book.
The story told through the series is actually quite complex, with people of different families having different allegiances, dragons and other mythical monsters forming bonds with different people, all having their own intricacies.
So with Iron Flame finishing at the end of a vicious battle, which saw a whirlwind of death, injury, and changing sides, it’s easy to see why people were a bit bamboozled, I was over 100 pages in before I was comfortable with being caught up and on the right track.
Onyx Flame continues in the aftermath of a battle. Lines had been crossed and alliances tested, stretched and in some cases broken.
Spoiler alert if you haven’t read the first two books
Xaden is not all that he seems, he has bad blood running through him, poisoning his soul and it should be turning him to the dark side, but he’s fighting it.
Violet won’t accept that she’s losing him and sets out, with her friends from the Fourth Wing, to try and find a cure. This involves trying to locate the mythical seventh breed of dragon.
At the same time the Wyvern are attacking with towns and villages falling.
As Xaden tries to hide his changing bloodline he helps to battle the type of beings that he is turning into.
During the quest, and one of the ensuing battles Violet meets her ultimate enemy, the her of the enemy, and only one of them can be allowed to live, unless Violet crosses over.
Although the main gist of this story is the quest to find a cure, and the seventh breed, it’s also a story of war and politics, and as with the previous book’s loyalties
And of course the relationship between Violet and Xaden.
I put a warning on my blog about the first two books, that although they were classed as young adult, they contained some graphic spice scenes. I was amazed how many people replied thanking me because their young, thirteen and fourteen year old, teenagers had been asking for the books as presents. Well if anything the spice in this book is even more graphic.
So what did I really think of the book.
Would I have read it all the way through if I hadn’t read the first two. No, I read this because I became invested in the whole story.
If this was the first book would I have been as engaged. No, if this was the first book I would have given in after the first fifty or sixty pages.
Will I read the next instalment. Yes. I’m invested in the characters and as this book ends on an even bigger cliff hanger than the last one I feel compelled to read whatever comes next.
That’s the sign of a clever author. Like Ink Black Heart in the Strike books by Robert Galbraith, I might not have loved the book, but the ongoing story has me hooked, but if the next one is in the same vain as this one, it might be my last.
Publisher Piatkus. Pages 544. Audiobook length 23.54 hours. Narrator Jasmin Walker
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