The Empyrean

Fourth Wing arrived in May 2023 from upstart imprint Red Tower and broke the industry's brain. Bookstores could not keep it in stock, BookTok made the dragons and the death count a personality, and by the time Onyx Storm arrived in January 2025 it was reportedly the fastest-selling adult novel in two decades. The pitch is irresistible: Violet Sorrengard, small and brittle-boned in a war college built to kill cadets like her, has to bond a dragon or die trying, and the man most likely to kill her is the one she cannot stop looking at.

The reading order so far: Fourth Wing (2023), Iron Flame (2023), and Onyx Storm (2025), with the main series planned at five books. Read them in order and do not read ahead on the wiki; each book ends on a genuine cliffhanger and the reveals are the point. What comes next is slightly unusual: Threshing Day, announced for September 29, 2026, is a collection of thirteen stories about characters across the Empyrean universe rather than book four. Yarros confirmed in early 2026 that she is writing the fourth main book, but it has no title or release date yet, so pace yourself accordingly. A television adaptation is in development at Amazon MGM, though nothing has been cast or dated.

Heat sits at a 3 on our spice scale: a handful of very explicit scenes per book inside a story that is mostly war, politics, and dragon logistics. Content notes: constant peril and cadet deaths, torture and interrogation in Iron Flame, war violence, grief, and a heroine whose chronic joint condition, inspired by the author's own Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, is portrayed without being cured or minimized.

The series works because of momentum and voice. Yarros writes propulsive chapters that end on hooks, the dragons are genuinely funny in their contempt for humans, and Violet's disability shaping her tactics rather than sidelining her remains one of the best things in modern romantasy. Fair criticism is easy to find too: Iron Flame's middle sags under repetitive arguments, a late-series memory plot device frustrates as much as it intrigues, and the worldbuilding creaks if you push on it. None of this has slowed it down, and the cliffhangers keep working.

While you wait for book four, Throne of Glass offers a completed epic with similar war-school DNA, and Zodiac Academy is the chaotic indie cousin. If the rider bond was your favorite part, our dragon rider and fated mates trope pages go deeper, and enemies to lovers fans have an entire shelf waiting.