Who Is Who In Onyx Storm
This is Onyx Storm characters explained: the riders, the dragons, the rulers of five islands, and a content note on the spice level.
Spoiler level: this video spoils Onyx Storm, including who dies. It does not retell book one. For Violet, Xaden, Tairn and the rest as they were in Fourth Wing, watch my Fourth Wing characters video first, and I’ll only cover what changes here.
Violet Sorrengail
Violet is twenty-one now, still small, and still taking pain every day because of her fragile joints. The big shift is that she becomes a leader. By the end, she picks her own squad, makes the call to kill Theophanie, and holds a lightning strike in a storm of shadow.
She also gains a second signet. Bonding Andarna made her a dream-walker, which lets her step into other people’s dreams, and she tests it using Maren’s family portrait. She wields with a conduit on her wrist, practices an hour a day on the ridgeline, and learns delayed runes from Felix and Trissa. Her father’s locked books, her clever poisoning of a council and her sarcasm are her best weapons.
Xaden Riorson
Xaden is the Duke of Tyrrendor now, the sixteenth, though he never wanted the title, and he spends the book as a professor at Basgiath. He is also in danger of turning. Every time he channels the earth for power, his irises show red rims, and he counts days between slips: forty-seven, sixty-six, seventy-three.
He can sense venin, they can sense him, and in the final chapters he breaks, becoming something else. Even his title as the only shadow wielder goes: first-year Lynx manifests shadows too, and Xaden says magic knows, he’s the balance. On his birthday Violet gives him a black onyx cuff. His love for Violet is the one thing he fights to keep. He ends the book missing, with a note, a ring and a lot of blame.
The Dragons Of Onyx Storm
Now the dragons, because people search for them. Tairn is Violet’s black morningstartail, gruff and sarcastic, and he calls Xaden the Dark One. Sgaeyl is Xaden’s navy blue dragon with a daggered tail, and she is Tairn’s mate. Andarna is the third: a small irid, a rare seventh breed that shifts color, turns invisible, and breathes fire that can scorch venin.
Andarna is rejected by her own kind, who call her a weapon. Later, an irid called Leothan takes her away and the bond between her and Violet breaks. She returns at the last moment, invisible, to guard Violet in the fight with Theophanie. Two rules shape every dragon scene: a rider dies when the dragon dies, and a gryphon dies when its flier does. That’s why Trager’s death kills Silaraine too.
The Rest Of The Dragons
Every rider has a dragon, and they are almost as important as the people. Ridoc rides Aotrom, a brown swordtail twenty-two years old. Rhi rides Feirge, a green daggertail who mocks her constantly. Sawyer rides Sliseag, a red swordtail who lowers a foreleg to help him mount with a prosthetic leg.
Garrick rides Chradh, a brown scorpiontail. Dain rides Cath, and Sloane rides Thoirt, both reds. Bodhi has Cuir, Imogen has Glane, Quinn has Cruth, Mira has Teine, Brennan has Marbh, and Aaric has Molvic, a blue clubtail with a scarred snout. Fliers bond gryphons: Cat has Kiralair, Trager had Silaraine, and Drake has Sova.
The Squad
Rhiannon Matthias is the squad leader, with black braids and a signet that pulls things to her. She keeps the squad together, and takes command of the Medaro Pass in the final battle. Ridoc Gamlyn is the joker, an ice wielder who shows he can freeze the water inside an orange, and later freezes a wyvern in midair.
Sawyer Henrick is a metallurgist who loses his lower leg and learns to ride again. Jesinia Neilwart, his romance, is a scribe who signs, and who researches the isles. Imogen Cardulo has pink hair and a flame of perpetual rage. Quinn Hollis, her best friend, can project copies of herself, and is the book’s heart, in my opinion. Cat Cordella is a Poromish flier who may inherit a throne, with a cousin, Drake Cordella, a tall flier with a quick smile who names a kitten Broccoli, and Maren Zina is a flier whose parents die at Newhall, leaving her seven-year-old twin brothers. Trager is a healer-trained flier with a mouth-shaped bruise and a new flirtation with Cat, until an arrow in Zehyllna’s game of luck ends it.
Dain, Sloane And Aaric
Dain Aetos is Violet’s old friend, the son of General Aetos, who disowns him. Dain helps steal her father’s research, says he killed the vice commandant Varrish, and gives his own power so Sloane can save Mira.
Sloane is a siphon, a signet that moves power from one person to another. She is a first-year who wears a rebellion relic, and she apologizes to Violet for her part in the death of Violet’s mother. Aaric is the secret one: Prince Aaric Graycastle, Halden’s younger brother. His dragon is Molvic. He speaks Unnbrish and Zehylish fluently, negotiates for forty thousand soldiers, and sends the marble dagger that ends Theophanie. He is also a true precog. The other first-years change too. Baylor Norris manifests farsight, Avalynn fire, and Lynx shadows.
Garrick, Bodhi And Tyrrendor
Garrick Tavis is Xaden’s best friend, a lieutenant who is both a wind wielder and a walker, which means he can cross hundreds of miles in a blink. He carries the heaviest load of the book, and by the finale he is exhausted, and then missing.
Bodhi Durran is Xaden’s cousin and the heir to Tyrrendor. His signet is balance, which cancels our kind of magic, but it does nothing against Theophanie. Lewellen speaks for Tyrrendor in the Senarium, and Felix is the grumpy Aretian veteran who trains Violet to wield. He says he hates Basgiath, but not as much as he hates dying.
The Sorrengails
Mira, Violet’s sister, is a shield wielder, and her dragon is Teine. She is also a rune genius, and she learns a lot from Professor Trissa. She is angry at the family secrets and at Brennan, and she is taken by Theophanie. Brennan is their brother, a mender who can heal wounds that should kill, and who now wears a Sorrengail name tag.
General Lilith Sorrengail, their mother, is dead before the book begins. Asher Sorrengail, their father, is dead too, but his locked books drive the plot. And their grandmother Niara, whom Mira visits, is where the story of Violet’s dedication to Dunne comes from.
Theophanie And The Venin
Theophanie is the main villain, a silver haired Maven in gauzy robes with a faded tattoo on her forehead, who says only a few are faster and older. She wields storms, not lightning, and was once a high priestess of Dunne. She calls herself T in her notes.
Berwyn is the Sage who made Xaden an initiate, and who returns at the end. Jack Barlowe is the captured initiate, who is kept alive for most of the book. Jack tells Violet the venin do not want to be cured, because magic does not negotiate. Venin drain the life out of land and living things, and wyvern are the beasts they ride.
Rulers And Courts
General Aetos is the commanding general at Basgiath, and a constant threat to Violet. General Melgren can foresee battles, and was never wrong. Prince Halden is Violet’s ex and heir to the throne, who got Anna Winshire killed after a list of stolen treasures in his handwriting turned up in Courtlyn’s palace. He is a constant friction with Xaden, whose shadows slam him into a rock wall. Queen Maraya of Poromiel dies when Suniva falls.
Overseas, Viscount Tecarus of Cordyn helps them. Narelle Anselm, ninety-three, keeps Asher’s books. King Courtlyn of Deverelli keeps panthers. Queen Marlis of Unnbriel fights Violet. Faris and Talia, Xaden’s mother, live on Hedotis. Calixta runs the festival on Zehyllna. Back at Basgiath, Professor Kiandra teaches history, Major Devera runs the Battle Brief, and Professor Carr kills a cadet who turns. Colonel Panchek, a senior officer, turns out in Xaden’s chapter to have sold them out.
The Irids
The irids are the seventh breed, and they are the reason for the quest. Violet and Ridoc find six of them on a volcanic isle off the map, each the size of Sgaeyl and each a different color. Their voices sound like a slide whistle in the mind. Dasyn is one of them, and Leothan another.
They say they are magic, they do not bond with humans, and they number in the hundreds. They tell Andarna she is irid in scale and name only. They also say there is no cure for venin, and they call Xaden an abomination.
Who Dies
Onyx Storm kills a lot of people. Named deaths: Captain Grady, Aura Beinhaven, Anna Winshire, Trager, Silaraine, Queen Maraya and Quinn. Maren’s parents die offstage, and a dozen Deverelli guards die at Xaden’s hands. Theophanie dies too, by Violet’s hand.
How Spicy Is Onyx Storm
Here’s the content note on the spice level. The book is open door. Four chapters carry on-the-page sex scenes: Chapter Three, Chapter Twenty-Five, and Chapters Forty-Eight and Forty-Nine, which run together. Chapter Three is shorter and mostly manual. Chapter Twenty-Five is long and explicit, and so are the pair near the end.
There is also heavy kissing in several other chapters, a veranda scene on Hedotis in Chapter Thirty-Four that stops, and a lot of innuendo. If you need to skip, the scenes follow Xaden and Violet only.
Content Notes
The book opens with its own content warning, and it lists war, blood, intense violence, gore, murder, animal death, grief, poisoning, burning, graphic language and sexual activities shown on the page. I’d add a threat against children, a throat cut, and the death of a gryphon alongside its rider. For the story, watch my Onyx Storm summary, and for the finale, the ending explained, both on bookexplained.com. Which character is your favorite, and which one would you save from this book? Tell me in the comments, and I’ll see you in the next video.
