People packed into bookstores, bars and breweries on Monday night, some dressed in costume and all filled with excitement over a brand new release: not of an album or TV show, but of the latest installation of their favourite book series.
Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm, the third book in a series that started with the wildly successful BookTok sensation Fourth Wing in 2023, officially hit the shelves on Tuesday. But hundreds of eager fans got their hands on copies at midnight at release events across the country, some shelling out up to $100 for the experience.
The author herself attended a sold-out midnight release held in New York City, just one of over 1,100 events planned across the U.S. and Canada. That’s nearly three times as many as those held for the second book, Iron Flame.
It’s a “seismic” release, according to Jamie Broadhurst, vice-president of marketing for Raincoast Books, the Canadian distributor of the publishing house behind the series, Entangled Publishing.
“All these fans coming out for midnight parties — it’s like the old days,” Broadhurst told CBC News. “Onyx Storm is gonna be one of the — if not the biggest — one of the biggest releases of the year. So it’s pretty cool.”
Yarros’s Empyrean series follows 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail at a college for dragon riders, delivering war, intrigue and a healthy dose of sensual romance.
The series falls under the “romantasy” genre popularized in recent years by authors like Sarah J. Maas — new adult books aimed at readers in their early 20s that combine the world-building of fantasy with the sweaty intensity of romance. But the Empyrean series has breached genre containment, with the first two books topping the New York Times bestseller list, breaking records and popping up seemingly everywhere on social media.
At Indigo, pre-orders for Onyx Storm were 161 per cent higher than for the second book in the series, Iron Flame, making it the second most pre-ordered book in Indigo’s history.
Even booksellers are excited to crack it open.
“I can’t wait,” Shannon MacNaughton, co-owner of Slow Burn Books in Calgary, told CBC News. “I know people [who] have taken off work today [to read the book]. Unfortunately I cannot do that ’cause I’m here to hand out the books.”
The return of the midnight book release
Decked out in black leather jackets as an homage to dragon-riding leathers or sweaters stamped with “Basgiath War College” on them, fans packed into Mill Street Brew Pub in Ottawa for The Spaniel’s Tale Bookstore’s midnight release of Onyx Storm. They pored over ice breaker bingo cards, entering completed cards into a raffle to win a signed copy of Fourth Wing, all while a countdown ticked away on a screen above.
The independent bookstore held an event for Iron Flame with 100 guests last year. They sold 170 tickets for this year’s event.
Around 450 people bought tickets to the biggest of Indigo’s 13 midnight release parties, at its flagship store in Toronto.
“People were in line at 9:45 [p.m.] outside in the cold,” Amanda Gauthier, category manager at Indigo, told CBC News.
Although it hasn’t been unheard of to hold midnight releases for other popular authors — Toronto’s Queen Books also held a sold-out one for Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo last fall — the sheer size of Onyx Storm‘s rollout reflects an enthusiasm for a book series rarely seen since the boom of young adult blockbusters in the 2000s and 2010s.
The midnight release party was originally popularized around 20 years ago, in the midst of the fervour for the Harry Potter books. Other series received this treatment for sequels as they gained popularity, such as Twilight and The Hunger Games, but as we rolled into the 2010s, these massive book events became smaller and more localized.
When it comes to “really big, co-ordinated events coast to coast,” booksellers are only now seeing a “resurgence” in interest, Gauthier said, spurred on by the popularity of romantasy.
Fans of Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series gathered at a sold-out event at Toronto’s Queen Books to celebrate the release of the third book in the series, the highly anticipated Onyx Storm.
These are “fan-led” events, she said. “You really need a built-in fan base that are really interested in community, are really interested in sharing their reading with other people.”
MacNaughton and her sister Nicola first opened Slow Burn Books in May 2023 after realizing there was a lack of genre-specific bookstores in Canada catering to the demand for romance.
Romantasy is the “most accessible genre in the romance field,” because of its crossover appeal, she told CBC News. While romance novels with a fantasy setting aren’t necessarily new, this term has helped identify novels with common tropes, and energize readers new to romance.
“It’s the escape into the love story that really draws us into the genre,” MacNaughton said. “In life, you don’t always get a ‘happily ever after.'”
Dragon rider craze
For MacNaughton, the popularity of the Empyrean series boils down to good world-building, a compelling premise and a classic enemies-to-lovers, Romeo-and-Juliet scenario where “her family did something horrible to his family and vice versa.”
There are other factors that left fans on tenterhooks waiting for Onyx Storm: The breakneck release speed, with the first two books published in the same calendar year; the buzz surrounding a Fourth Wing Amazon Prime TV show reportedly in development; and the second book’s serious cliffhanger ending.
Cole Davidson, co-owner of The Spaniel’s Tale Bookstore, pointed out that many of the fans now reading romantasy titles also grew up attending midnight release events for young adult novels.
He told CBC News that social media communities like BookTok, where Fourth Wing went viral, have helped to spur a “resurgence of reading in general,” particularly for romance and fantasy genres.
“The pandemic probably did help with the revival of this, as well. People were looking for safe ways to find community and reading the book and talking about it online was a safe way to do that.”
Then vs. now
In the 2000s, a midnight release event meant crowds lining up for hours outside of a bookstore. Now, these are blockbuster ticketed events, with many having sold out long before the doors opened. Prices for Onyx Storm events ranged from just under $50 to $100 for a single ticket, depending on the bookseller holding the event. Every ticket guaranteed a hardcover copy of the book — with some receiving limited-edition copies — but pricier tickets often included a drink ticket, snacks, games and sometimes tie-in merchandise.
In Calgary, 128 attendees of Slow Burn Books’ release party did pottery painting as part of the event as they swapped fan theories and shared their excitement.
They wanted to make it a creative, community event, not just a book sale, MacNaughton said.
“It was just really, really good energy.”
