**I received an ARC from Netgalley. In no way was I compensated for this review, and these are my honest opinions.**
Furyborn by Claire Legrand
Release Date: May 22, 2018
My Rating: 3.5 stars
Summary: 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 was very excited when I was approved for this book! I had read the prologue, and it sounded amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. However, this is entirely my preference; it was a good book, I just didn't like parts of it.
This book is told in dual points of view: Rielle's and Eliana's. Rielle lives in a kingdom, best friends with the crown prince. Eliana's point of view is set years later, under a tyrannical empire. While I liked that we got two drastically different story lines, I struggled to read it. You know when you're reading a really good scene and then, just when you're about to get to a good part, it switches points of view? and you hate it? So yeah, that was kind of my problem. I loved Rielle's parts at the beginning and hated when it switched to Eliana's because Eliana's storyline was kind of boring at the start. And then during the second half, it switched; Rielle's story grew tiresome to me, but I really started getting into what was happening with Eliana.
This was honestly the reason it took me a month and a half to read this book; the premise is so cool, and I really enjoyed the worldbuilding with the angel mythology! This is one of those books with little excerpts from a book/letter/something at the beginning of the chapters, and I always find that it adds to the world a lot.
I wasn't really into some of the romance; idk, again it's really just a personal preference. I liked that Eliana is bisexual without making a big deal about it! However, it wasn't immediately apparent, so I'm not entirely sure why everyone's hailing it as THE bisexual fantasy. Maybe that will change in the next one though. And honestly (**slight spoilers but not really**) I thought Rielle easily could have been in a polyamorous relationship. But we'll see.
Furyborn was an interesting start to a series, and I'm excited to see where it goes next. The worldbuilding is lush and the characters are written so well. Pick it up if you're a fan of high fantasy, angels, and prophecies!
About the Author: Claire Legrand used to be a musician until she realized she couldn't stop thinking about the stories in her head. A native Texan, she is now a writer and librarian living in central New Jersey.
Her first novel is THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, one of the New York Public Library's 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing in 2012. She is also the author of THE YEAR OF SHADOWS, a ghost story for middle grade readers, WINTERSPELL, a young adult re-telling of The Nutcracker, and SOME KIND OF HAPPINESS, a middle grade story about mental illness, family secrets, and the power of storytelling. SOME KIND OF HAPPINESS is a 2017 Edgar Award nominee and one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2016. Her latest novel, FOXHEART, is a fast-paced fantasy-adventure and a 2016 Junior Library Guild selection. She is also one of the four authors behind THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES, an anthology of dark middle grade short fiction that was a Junior Library Guild selection, a Bank Street Best Book, and among the New York Public Library's 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing in 2014.
Coming up for Claire is FURYBORN, the first book in the Empirium trilogy, due out May 22, 2018, followed by SAWKILL GIRLS in fall 2018, and THORNLIGHT, a companion novel to FOXHEART, coming in winter 2019.
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