I Arranged a Weekend Getaway Just to Read ‘Onyx Storm’ (Yes, It's for Grownups!)

It all started with the matching pajama bottoms: buttery soft and printed with colorful book spines and the words “just one more chapter” on the right hip. 

I snapped up three pairs when I spotted them at a gift market this winter, knowing they’d be perfect for me and two friends to wear on a tentatively planned weekend getaway devoted to our devouring Onyx Storm, the latest and third book in Rebecca Yarros’ massively best-selling Empyrean fantasy series about a young heroine and a violent war college that tests the bonds between humans and dragons.

The fabulous pajamas made our reading vacation a must. So, on a recent weekend, we packed them up with cozy sweatshirts and matching fuzzy socks, bid our families outside New York City farewell and drove two hours to an Airbnb in western Massachusetts that we’d chosen specifically for how comfy the living room seating looked. When we arrived late Friday night, we arranged the furniture so we’d each have a cozy reading spot, then spent Saturday snuggled up under warm blankets with our books, nibbling from a well-stocked snack board — and later drinking wine and eating pizza we had delivered — while getting lost in this fantastic story that has become a Harry Potter-style phenomenon for grownups young and old (or, in our cases, middle-aged).  ​

In fact, when I picked up my reserved copy of Onyx Storm at my local bookstore, the sales clerk told me she had been selling copies to people of all ages — “as many 70-year-olds as 18-year-olds,” as she put it. Her favorite customers? The mothers who arrived with their adult daughters to buy copies of the book and then settled into the café to start reading together.​

Author Rebecca Yarros

Courtesy Entangled Publishing

A phenomenon

​Yarros, 43, has published more than a dozen other novels, including the 2023 romance In the Likely Event, but none that have taken off quite like this series. It began with 2023’s Fourth Wing, followed just six months later by Iron Flame — both massive hits with adults of all ages. But now her wild popularity is at a fever pitch: According to BookScan, Onyx Storm is the fastest-selling adult title since the organization started tracking book sales in 2004.​ So far, that’s 2.7 million copies, with some fans buying both standard and deluxe editions — pricier versions that have images of dragons stenciled around the edges. Meanwhile, Yarros stays in touch with her 1.2 million Instagram followers — sharing, for instance, the playlist of songs she listened to while writing and editing the book. ​

The novels, which have been optioned for a TV series adaptation on Amazon, are centered on the Bagslath War College, where students are divided into training as infantry soldiers, healers, scribes and a prestigious squad of dragon riders, who must prove they’re worthy of bonding with a shrinking population of the creatures. Those who succeed form a lifelong connection to their dragons and gain the ability to channel that dragon’s power into extraordinary abilities such as shadow wielding, mind reading and weather control. These skills are then honed to be used in battle against powerful enemies who seek to control the dragons for themselves. As the main character, Violet, makes her way through her training, she begins to discover that there are darker forces at work, hidden by the leadership, and must call upon her training as a scribe to discover the truth buried deep in the archives of the college’s libraries. ​