by Kyle Munkittrick

A Song of Onyx (Storm) and AI

Ted Gioia recently highlighted that when it comes to media, abundance is the name of the game. He cited Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm, a 544 page romantasy novel that is also the fastest selling book in twenty years, as an example. While Gioia sees Yarros’s latest entry in her Empyrean series as indicative of where art is heading in terms of scale, I see something else.

I see Onyx Storm as the first opportunity for AI and literature that might actually work. And this is because, for all of its enormous popularity, Onyx Storm is terrible.

My suspicion is Gioia may have hesitated to cite Onyx Storm had he, you know, read it. Reading Onyx Storm is, in terms of content, equivalent to a binge watch session of Love Island. Despite being technically ‘long-form’ content, one would hardly argue that binging reality TV is the stunning rebuke to TikTok culture he thinks it is. It’s a book comprised entirely of manufactured cliffhangers, sexual tension, and dragon-based drama, not deep thought.

While reading Onyx Storm, I found myself experiencing the anhedonia Gioia mentions—I just couldn’t bring myself to pay attention. I didn’t care. Those who read it and do care are not reading it as literature. They’re reading it as entertainment and to be titillated. That’s ok! But let’s not pretend it’s the same as the semi-virality of Middlemarch among the Silicon Valley cognoscenti and those in their milieu.

But Onyx Storm could have and should have been good. I know this because I’ve read the entire Empyrean series, including the banger of an initial entry, Fourth Wing. Read more »