Book Review – Furyborn

Book: Furyborn (The Empirium trilogy 1) by Claire Legrand
Release Date: May 22nd 2018
Tags: Fantasy / High Fantasy / Young Adult / Angels / Elemental Magic / Magic

 

I received a review copy in exchange for an honest review from Netgalley and the publisher.

Synopsis

When assassins ambush her best friend, the crown prince, Rielle Dardenne risks everything to save him, exposing her ability to perform all seven kinds of elemental magic. The only people who should possess this extraordinary power are a pair of prophesied queens: a queen of light and salvation and a queen of blood and destruction. To prove she is the Sun Queen, Rielle must endure seven trials to test her magic. If she fails, she will be executed…unless the trials kill her first.
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A thousand years later, the legend of Queen Rielle is a mere fairy tale to bounty hunter Eliana Ferracora. When the Undying Empire conquered her kingdom, she embraced violence to keep her family alive. Now, she believes herself untouchable–until her mother vanishes without a trace, along with countless other women in their city. To find her, Eliana joins a rebel captain on a dangerous mission and discovers that the evil at the heart of the empire is more terrible than she ever imagined.
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As Rielle and Eliana fight in a cosmic war that spans millennia, their stories intersect, and the shocking connections between them ultimately determine the fate of their world–and of each other.

Review

Long before the final cover was even released there was a lot of buzz surrounding Furyborn. I had heard of the author before but had read nothing by her so I was quite pleased when my wish was granted on Netgalley. Not that I had any idea on what it was really about it. But I think that is the best way to go into a book these days.

First I would like to point out one thing that isn’t in the synopsis and I know that is a deal breaker for some of you. This book has angels. Angels always are a bit of a thing. There was a time where angel books were plentiful and a lot of people were put off by them. I do like how the angels were in this though I still have a lot of questions.

For the most part I do think the world building was done really well, despite still having questions. It was done in a way that I still got some answers along the way but also more questions. I wanted to read on to get an answer. I didn’t get frustrated. But I wondered. I wanted to know. In that way I think the author really pulled me in the story and I became absorbed when I had time to read a huge chunk of it in one go.

The book tells two stories, two ladies. As the synopsis says, they are a century apart but connected. The chapters switched between their third person point of views every chapter. While I did became absorbed by the book at some point, it was initially hard to get into because of the constant switching between the two characters. Their voices and stories are very different, that isn’t the problem. I just did not appreciate being jolted out of one story to be flung back into another as chapters often ended on cliffhangers. Even so, it did keep a good pace and action throughout the story so I do understand why they choose for this way.

Another small downside for me was that after the prologue I had much more interest in one of the ladies than the others. Rielle just captured my attention more because I am incredibly curious as to how she came to be as she was in the prologue. And I do not have an answer to that yet. Not entirely. Elianne is a more closed of character, defensive, guarded. While I understand why she is the way that she is I had a lot of trouble warming up to her because of it. Also her story just did not draw many questions and as such felt more to the back for me. Both ladies kick incredible ass though. And both have great developmental arcs.

I have to say that the side characters also were well developed. I have an especial warm spot for Remi. But also Navi, Harkan, Adrik and Simon are characters that I took a liking to. In that sense I was kind of disappointed with how the romance was developed with Elianne. I was more into Rielle’s romance again, despite the obvious triangle happening there.

I am incredibly interested in seeing where Claire Legrand is going to take this story and these characters. There is a lot of potential here for an epic new fantasy series.