[Review] Furyborn by Claire Legrand

Furyborn by Clare Legrand

Series: The Empirium #1

Format: ARC

Rating: 2.5 stars

Release Date: May 22, 2018

Goodreads 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.
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.

I received Furyborn from a Goodreads giveaway - this does not impact my review in any way.


So Furyborn starts off the Empirium trilogy. It's 500 pages long, alternating back and forth between two POVs that are a 1000 years apart. One is Rielle, who is forced to undergo seven trials in order to survive after her secret - the fact that she has power over the seven elements - is found out. She becomes the legendary Blood Queen, and a thousand years later is just part of history to Eliana, who is an assassin, the Dread of Orline. Eliana sets off on a mission with a mysterious captain, and along the way finds out more about her past and how she's connected to Rielle.

This book is a massive undertaking, and these alternating POVs and stories are no small feat. However, the fact that the story kept on shifting between characters didn't help me connect to any of them. There is a whole cast I need to keep track of, on top of the magic system and world-building that was really confusing for a good portion of the book. Speaking of characters, because I could barely remember who everyone was, no one stood out to me. Some characters popped in and out of a few chapters, and were never seen again, making readers like me wonder what's the point of having so many characters who serve no purpose. Eliana had a lover in the beginning (whose name I don't remember), who was clearly there to propel her onto the actual love interest. Once he was gone, she doesn't even bring him up again, making his significance to her rather... insignificant.

The first 200 pages or so read very slowly to me. There was a lot of action, but this action didn't do a lot to drive the plot forward. So much was happening, but what was the point of it all? There was so much glitz and glamour but no concrete explanation on how the magic system worked.

Also both Rielle and Eliana read as very Mary-Sue like characters. Rielle could command all seven elements. Eliana was a feared assassin. They read very similarly, which lead me to speed-reading through the book occasionally not realizing there was a POV shift.

So much action and not enough characterization or worldbuilding. It was only until the last 150 pages when everything started to fall into place, or rather, mark the building blocks towards the rest of the trilogy.

Unfortunately, Furyborn didn't live up to its hype for me. It's certainly a book of epic proportions, and I can see why readers can gravitate towards it, but it wasn't the book for me.