Furyborn by Claire Legrand

Furyborn by Claire Legrand
Series: Empirium Trilogy #1
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on May 22nd 2018
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult
Goodreads

Follows two fiercely independent young women, centuries apart, who hold the power to save their world...or doom it.

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.

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.

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.

I received a copy of this book for review. This does not influence my thoughts on this book or this review.

Furyborn is one of this year’s most talked about fantasies so I was eager to read it. I really liked the novel and I am eager for the continuation, but I was not as enthused as I thought I would be.

Furyborn is the first in a new trilogy about two queens, decades apart, who are related. One is fated to The Blood Queen, the other, The Sun Queen. Rielle Dardenne exposes her powers to save her friend, the crown prince. As she can control all the elements, those around her expect her to be one of the queens from the prophecy. A thousand years later, Eliana Ferracoca has heard about the legend of Queen Rielle. As both women fight their own battles, it is revealed that maybe their lives are connected in ways that they didn’t expect.

While I liked Furyborn, I didn’t love it. I usually am able to read a book on its own but I had to keep one of my playlists running in the background so I wouldn’t get bored while reading. I think this is because the first 100 pages of the novel is spoiled by the synopsis and it took me a while to get really invested in the story. Even at that point, I was not as invested in the story as I usually am. Because readers are fully aware of Rielle’s fate through Eilana’s POV (and the description), it seemed almost extra to have her point of view.

I felt that the romance in this novel was a large selling point (according to the blurbs) but I was not as invested in it as I could’ve been. The romances felt almost predictable. In addition, one of my pet peeves is that in a fantasy world where elemental magic and literal angels exist, I found it very jarring to see that guns were also present. I guess it fits into the narrative that is more apparent at the end of the novel, as Eliana’s world is one that has science (talk of genetics appears then) but still… for a skilled assassin who uses knives and blades to be stopped with a gun was so boring.

Overall, I liked Furyborn but there are few elements in it that I wasn’t a huge fan of. Despite that, I think I would still read the sequel to see how it all plays out.