Book Review: Furyborn



Title: Furyborn (The Empirium #1)
Author: Claire Legrand
Genre: New Adult | Fantasy | Magic
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication Date: May 22, 2018
Source: Publisher
Format: eARC



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 (goodreads).


Furyborn is for us fantasy lovers!
Plot: Furyborn caught my eye because of dual perspectives over the span of a thousand years. Furyborn was a book that demanded your attention from the prologue because Legrand revealed the ending first, and it was up to the reader to piece together what happened. Even though Furyborn is marketed as a Young Adult title, I think it's better for the New Adult audience. Furyborn had some mature situations and the characters themselves were all over the age of 18. 

I couldn't tear myself away from Furyborn because the chapters were so jammed pack with action and mini-cliffhangers. The dual perspectives between the thousand years also made this book easy to fly through and had me desperately wanting to know what led Rielle to her ending. 

Characters: When I first dived into Furyborn, I was drawn to Rielle. She was a complicated girl and I enjoyed seeing her explore her powers and decide how far she was willing to go to get what she wanted. However, the more I read, the more I was attracted to Eliana. Eliana's story took place a thousand years after Rielle's arc and I was hooked by Eliana's blood-stained past. Legrand did an exceptional job of crafting complicated characters who made their own desires a priority. I can't say that I genuinely liked any characters, but I enjoyed watching their arcs unfold. 

Worldbuilding: Claire Legrand's world and timeline of Furyborn was nothing short of amazing. With Furyborn, Legrand was tasked with crafting two separate worlds, one where magic and royalty reigned and the other deprived of magic and under the control of a cruel dictator. The two worlds were so different that it was hard to believe that they were once the same place and I loved how freely Legrand allowed her characters to move. 

Short N Sweet: Furyborn is the start of an addictive series, it's sure to wow fans of complex characters.  


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