Two queens will rise.
One with the power to save the world.
One with the power to destroy it.
They carry your fate in their hands.
“I have sent her far away. With someone so powerful you’ll never find her.”
The Story
Furyborn is the first book in the Empirium Trilogy written by Claire Legrand. It’s about two young woman who live centuries apart. We follow Rielle Dardenne’s story. Her story starts when she risks her life to safe her best friend from an ambush, exposing her ability to perform all seven kinds of elemental magic. Not just one like the rest of the people. The only people who should be able to do so are two prophesied queens. A queen of light and salvation (the Sun Queen) and a queen of blood and destruction (the Blood Queen). Rielle needs to prove which queen she is by enduring seven trials to test her magic.
A thousand years later we follow Eliana Ferracora’s story. Eliana world has changed a lot since Rielle’s time. Almost all kingdoms are conquered by the Undying Empire. When the Undying Empire conquered Eliana’s kingdom she embraced violence to keep her family alive. Becoming a fearless bounty hunter known as the Dread of Orline. Eliana’s story start when her mother goes missing without a trace, along with countless other women in their city. She finds herself mixed in a rebel mission as part of a deal to find her mother, with a man who calls himself the Wolf.
The world distilled to this single, terrible moment. Dread knocked the wind from Rielle’s lungs. The arbiters, whoever they were, were no soldiers of her father’s. They were from Brosvall. And they were surrounding Audric with their swords raised to kill.
My thoughts
Claire’s writing style is great. I liked the language she used and the way she told the story. Every sentence was eventful. The pace is pretty fast, but it’s not too fast. It did not feel like she rushed into things. I think it was well balanced. A big compliment to Claire for being able to write a fast pace book that didn’t feel like it was fast paced. She just completely sucked me in and made it almost impossible to stop turning the pages. I found myself often thinking just one more chapter and then something happened (again) and I just couldn’t stop reading.
The story was written in two point of views (as the story suggests). I have mentioned before I struggle with different point of views. I had to get used to it, but after about four chapters I absolutely loved it. I knew it was going to be in two point of views after reading the synopsis. Rielle and Eliana live a thousand years apart, so it was obvious it was going to be written in two point of views. When I got used to it, I actually quit liked the different point of views. You switch from point of view every time a new chapter starts. The chapters weren’t extremely long either, about ten pages.
The queen stopped screaming just after midnight.
Simon had been hiding in her closet, fingers jammed into his ears to block out the noise. For hours, he had crouched there, knees drawn to chest, head bowed.
For hours, the queen’s rooms had shuddered in tandem with her screams.
Now, there was silence.
The story line is divided in two different stories that come closer together every chapter. Some things about the story were pretty predictable and obvious, but in my opinion they were minor things. Because this story starts with a prologue about Rielle, we know how her story ends. What we are actually reading happens before the prologue. So some things are predictable, but we still don’t understand how it all happened and why it happened. So in my opinion the story line of Furyborn is very exciting and I loved it. The ending of this book was pretty good, but because this is going to be a trilogy I still have so many questions left.
Rielle and Eliana are so much alike and yet they are not at all. They are both very strong female characters. Rielle is like an open book. She feels everything. Eliana on the other hand suppresses her feelings in order to be the Dread of Orline, heartless. Rielle only cares about her two friends and Eliana only cares about her family. I like them both, but I do like Rielle more than Eliana.
I do not break or bend
I cannot be silenced
I am everywhere
What I especially enjoyed is the way Claire wrote about the elemental magic, especially Rielle’s magic. It’s very detailed and (well) magical. It was so easy to picture what Rielle saw. I really enjoyed that. I also like the whole idea of this cosmic war, which is going on in the book. It’s something I haven’t read before and I really like what Claire did with the idea.
“How can you life knowing that you’ll kill people?” Harkan had asked nervously watching her work. “Good people.”
“It’s easy,” Eliana had replied. “It’s the only way to survive.”
Wrap up
I absolutely enjoyed reading Furyborn and I can’t wait to read the next two books. In the mean time I have pre-ordered the final copy of this book, which will be released on May 22nd. As always, I struggled with the two point of views at the beginning, but once I got used to it I actually enjoyed it. I give Furyborn a 5 out of 5. I definitely recommend it! My next read is going to be the Last Namsara.
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