If you have finished Onyx Storm and the wait for book four is already unbearable, you already know the problem. You do not want just another fantasy. You want a specific thing: a love interest who might be losing himself, a world where the danger is real and the romance is tangled up in it, and a female protagonist who keeps going even when she probably should not.
The Empyrean series works because Rebecca Yarros refuses to separate the romance from the stakes. Violet and Xaden’s relationship has weight because there is something genuinely at risk beyond the feelings themselves. He is changing in ways she cannot fully control. The war around them is not backdrop; it is pressure on every scene. And the dragon bond adds a layer of attachment that makes loss in this world cost something.
These six books each deliver a version of what makes Onyx Storm so hard to put down. None of them are substitutes. But each one is worth your time while you wait.
When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker
If the dragon world is the thing you cannot let go of, start here. Set in a world where dragons sail into the sky when they die and become moons, When the Moon Hatched follows Raeve, a rebel assassin imprisoned by a guild of powerful Fae, and Kaan Vaegor, a dragon rider who ends up in the same prison following a lead that may reshape everything he understands about his past.
Parker builds her world with a density that matches Yarros. The lore is specific, the magic system has rules that matter, and the dragon bond carries genuine emotional weight. The romance between Raeve and Kaan is a slow build with serious tension underneath it. Both of them are carrying grief the other does not fully understand, and that gap is where most of the story lives. Fast-paced, emotionally heavy, and genuinely difficult to put down. The sequel, The Ballad of Falling Dragons, is one of the most anticipated books of 2026.
Read this if: You need dragons, a strong female lead who does not ask for help, and a love story built on things left unsaid.
From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Poppy is the Maiden, a sacred figure in the kingdom of Solis, raised under strict rules, kept apart from everyone, and told her entire life that her purpose is to Ascend. Hawke Flynn is her guard. He should not be interesting to her and she should not be interesting to him. Neither of those things turns out to be true.
What Armentrout does with this setup is build a slow-burn romance with the kind of banter and tension that makes you read faster than you mean to. The world opens gradually. The revelations in the second half of the book are the kind that reframe everything. If you loved the way Yarros writes the early tension between Violet and Xaden before everything became enormous, From Blood and Ash is the most direct equivalent. The series runs six books and gets bigger and stranger as it goes. The first one is a very good place to start.
Read this if: You want forbidden romance, a love interest with layers and secrets, and a world that keeps getting more complicated the further you go.
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
If you have read A Court of Thorns and Roses and have not continued, Onyx Storm is a good reason to go back. The second book in the ACOTAR series shares more with the Empyrean than you might expect, specifically in the dynamic between a female protagonist rebuilding herself after surviving something enormous and a love interest who is dangerous in ways that are complicated to explain to other people.
Rhysand is one of the templates for the brooding, morally grey love interest that the romantasy genre has been working through ever since. Maas writes him with more interiority than the first book allows, and Feyre’s growth in this book is earned rather than declared. The Night Court is one of the most thoroughly realised settings in the genre. If your reading of the Empyrean series is at least partly about wanting a world you can fully inhabit, ACOMAF delivers that.
Read this if: You loved Violet and Xaden’s dynamic and want a love story with the same complicated charge, in a world built to the same level of detail.
The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem
Sylvia has spent five years being unremarkable. She is the last heir to the destroyed kingdom of Jasad, her magic is suppressed by invisible cuffs her family placed on her as a child, and she has no interest in being found. When Arin, the heir to the kingdom that destroyed hers, tracks rebel Jasadians to her village and exposes her in the process, she makes a deal to stay alive: help him lure the rebels, and he will not have her killed.
The enemies-to-lovers tension here has sharper edges than most. These two have real reasons to hate each other, and Hashem makes sure you feel both sides of it. The magic system is distinctive, the politics have weight, and Sylvia is the kind of protagonist who is constantly one step ahead until she is not. This is a slower burn than the Empyrean series but a more complex political landscape, and readers who want their fantasy with more intrigue alongside the romance will find a lot to hold onto here.
Read this if: You want enemies-to-lovers where the enmity has actual roots, and a heroine hiding power that will eventually demand to be used.
Quicksilver by Callie Hart
Saeris Fane is a human woman whose life is upended when she is pulled into the Fae realm without warning or preparation. She does not know the rules, does not understand the power structures, and is surrounded by people who have every reason to lie to her. What she does have is resourcefulness and the kind of refusal to back down that Violet Sorrengail fans will recognise immediately.
Quicksilver was one of the breakout romantasy debuts of 2024 and it earns its reputation. The Fae world is drawn with consistency and its own internal logic, the romance has serious tension, and the pace rarely lets you settle. If part of what you love about Onyx Storm is the feeling of being dropped into a dangerous world alongside a protagonist figuring it out in real time, Quicksilver delivers that. The series is ongoing, which means there is more to come.
Read this if: You want a female protagonist thrown into a world that wants to kill her, a love interest who may or may not be trustworthy, and the same compulsive readability.
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
The series that established Sarah J. Maas as one of the defining voices in modern fantasy. Celaena Sardothien is an assassin who has survived things that should have broken her, now competing in a tournament at the king’s court for the chance to earn her freedom. The first book is smaller in scope than what the series becomes, but it lays the foundation for a seven-novel series that eventually becomes one of the most ambitious fantasy epics of the last decade.
If you are the kind of reader who commits to a series and wants to spend real time in a world, Throne of Glass is built for that. The power scaling across the series is significant, the romantic dynamics shift and complicate in ways that do not feel predictable, and Celaena herself is one of the great characters in the genre. Start at the beginning and give it two books before deciding whether it has you.
Read this if: You want to invest in something large and you want a female protagonist with genuine edge whose story grows far beyond where it starts.
A Note on the Empyrean Series Itself
If you came to Onyx Storm first, it is worth going back. Fourth Wing establishes the world and the relationship with enough momentum that it holds up as a standalone read, and Iron Flame deepens both before Onyx Storm raises the stakes again. The full picture of what Yarros is building only becomes clear across all three.
The wait for book four will be long. These six books should help.