save your toxic boyfriend 101

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

While I think parts of this are sincerely awesome, I unfortunately think those awesome parts get swallowed up by a plot that's trying to hold too many things at once. And, on top of that, it's a plot that moves only incrementally faster than the ultraslow plot of Iron Flame.
I was able to track with Violet's motivations for the most part: find a cure for the dark wielding, parasitical magic slowly eating away at your boyfriend's mind and find the long lost family of your dragon who may be the key to a cure as well as invaluable allies for a coming war. I started to get more bored than lost when Violet and the "quest squad's" journey just kept going and going. Sure, finding the irids in the very first place beyond Basigath they looked would've been incredibly disappointing. But the only parts of this novel I find memorable are bits and pieces of the random places they visit, such as Trager's death in the land of the luck-obsessed people and the scary panthers in the one ruler's lavish banquet hall.
Character development-wise, I disliked Xaden more and more as the book progressed. I started to wonder why Violet was fighting so hard for the fate of a guy who loves her enough to tell her to run in the other direction. Maybe it's harsh to question why she'd fight so hard, because it is in love's name, after all. But Violet keeps putting herself, her friends, and her dragons in danger time and time again for Xaden who, in the end, uses his dark wielding powers for what he testifies is one last form of resistance. I just simply cannot wrap my head around this logic; it made me really angry, to be frank. For him to spend all of the book exhibiting self-control concerning wielding (except, of course, when they're in places without magic where he sees the opportunity to have some wild sex and takes it), only to then just let go of that self-control in a battle that felt impossible to track from a reading standpoint felt like such a subpar ending. I didn't know what kind of emotional payoff that ending was going for. In comparison to the first and second books' amazing cliffhangers, this one is certainly lacking.
So I guess, in conclusion, I'll be reading the fourth book when it comes out to see if elements of the first book's magic make some reappearances. I haven't completely given up hope on this series.

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Some of my favorite quotes from Onyx Storm:

"Help her, my love, I’m afraid our daughter has atrocious taste in men."

"'You have been the gift of my life,' I tell Tairn."

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