Storm Furies picks up right where Harbingers breaks off. The domana-caste elves have been forcibly unlogged from their Spell Stones as the Skin Clan and oni invade. Tinker and Oilcan have to muster forces to protect the elven enclaves, Tinker’s siblings are in the wind, and Esme and Lain’s brother Tristan may or may not be heading for a redemption arc. Hovering above all of this are way two many women with the ability to actively see, speculate, and shape the future, many of them with conflicting goals on both side of the conflict. (Meanwhile, Olivia, Tommy Chang and other characters have their own parts to play in the action.)
Storm Furies is not the insane hurtling through various crowded povs that Harbringers was. (Again, Harbringers action could have been stretched over two books, and done more for the character development of the characters.) Things slow down a bit as Tinker has to think up a cure for the spell cast by the Skin Clan (or rather, she’ll be assisting her many times great elven grandfather Forge). Windwolf has to fight the oni and the twins have to cause as much chaos as possible if they want the baby dragons to hatch safely.
It also slows down enough for the theme of “generational trauma is messing everything up,” to be applied. We know that there are still elves living from the time they first rebelled against their Skin Clan masters. Their paranoia and PTSD it turns out is what caused a conflict called the Clan Wars, which probably made them even more full of PTSD. The presence of the humans and the gate was starting to help change that, allowing elves who wanted a change to leave for better (or at least different) circumstances. (This is hinted somewhat in the earlier books, but I kind of wish it had been more of a theme? It was presented as a static, insular culture but we don’t get an idea of “they are static and insular because their grandparents and parents are kind of extremely unwell.”)
Bluntly: Most of the older generation(s) of elves are way past due for so much therapy, which they never invented. (On the other hand, this does follow: if you don’t have a concept of trauma–you are not going to understand that you have been traumatized a lot of the time.)
Because Storm Furies had a (slightly) slower pace than Harbingers, I had a much better time reading it. (I may go over Harbingers again to see if there’s anything I missed the first time.) It has a very open ending with a lot of issues unresolved, issues that I hope will be resolved in the next however many books.
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