Prophecies, Strong Female Protagonists, and Evil Angels: Furyborn by Claire Legrand

I wasn’t one of the lucky people who managed to score an ARC of this one but I was lucky enough to live in Australia where I stumbled across Furyborn about two weeks earlier than its May 22nd release date. I’d been looking forward to this one for a while so once I finished my current read, I quickly got stuck in.

Summary

Furyborn follows two female protagonists whose stories take place a thousand years apart. In the past, Rielle Dardenne is the first person in many years with the ability to perform all seven kinds of elemental magic. When she exposes her abilities to defend her friend, the crown prince, people claim she is one of two prophesied queens, one who will be their salvation and another who will destroy everything. To prove she’s the former, she is forced to undertakes a series of trials based on each magical element where failure means execution. Meanwhile, Eliana Ferracora, famed hunter for hire known as the ‘Dread of Orline’, lives in a world long almost conquered by an evil empire. When her mother is kidnapped, she makes a deal with mysterious rebel captain, The Wolf – assist in rescuing someone vital to the rebellion and he will help Eliana find her mother. As you can imagine, both stories tie into one another eventually.

Why You Should Read this Book

Now that’s a Prologue!

Legrand starts Furyborn off with a strong prologue which introduces four of her major characters and mentions a fifth. It’s the beginning of a story but also the end of one and dangles quite a few plot threads – there’s an evil angel after a baby, a hated queen who supposedly murdered the king, a half-angel kid that can time travel…like, man.

From the moment it’s over you’re extremely keen to not only find out how Rielle and her kingdom have reached this point (because of course there’s more to the story) but also where things can possibly go from here.

You Go Girls!

I didn’t love the central characters here but I can’t deny that they (a) have their own very clear and distinct personalities, and (b) are just generally strong women. From a plot standpoint, they also contrast and balance one another. Rielle has spent most of her life among royalty and nobility, she’s never known a romantic relationship, and is extremely magically powerful. Comparatively, Eliana’s skills lie in her physical prowess. She’s sexually experienced, grown up in a loving family but has had to kill, lie and steal to support them and herself since she was young. However, what’s refreshing is that both women are confident in their bodies and aware of their strengths. There isn’t really any of that annoying ‘But, what if I can’t do this?’ back and forth. Instead, these girls are like, why yes, I am freaking awesome, I am an absolute babe. Come at me boys and assassins!

Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby

One of the things I loved about this book was that it didn’t shy away from sex. Yes, some of the dialogue is cringy as hell, yes, some of it’s majorly theatrical, and yes, I could have done without a character once again “shattering” at the same time as the male lead, but overall I was impressed.

• There’s a female masturbation scene, one that includes the associated emotions
• Eliana is known to have had multiple casual sexual relationships with both men and women and unashamedly says she enjoys them.
• There’s only one actual sex scene in the book but during it consent is made verbally clear, contraception is discussed, both parties communicate with the other as to what they want, and there’s foreplay in regards to pleasuring the female partner.

Why You Might Want to Skip It:

But it JUST got Good!

One of the things that always bugs me about stories in this style is that I often get super into what’s happening in one storyline before all of a sudden I’m forced back into the other one. Then I get into that POV before it happens all over again! Unfortunately, it tends to happen just as something big is about to go down. It’s like experiencing a million tiny cliff hangers. For example:

Dude swung his sword at Eliana’s face…

*turns page* Chapter 30 Rielle

Me: NOOOOOOOOO

Go Faster & Not Again

As can be expected with this style of narrative, there are variances in pace. With all the rushing around, Eliana’s storyline often feels like there’s stuff happening, which is why for ages you’ll be asking yourself, why am I so bored? Once you actually look at the bigger picture, you see that there isn’t much of value happening until later on in the book. Worse, the things that do happen until that point are due to Eliana acting selfishly or stupidly.

With Rielle’s story, the focus is on her completing trials for each type of elemental magic – it’s a tried and true trope which I’m fine with. The problem is, that there’s seven different elements and after a while, although the challenges are different, things start to blur together. It also doesn’t help that the writing in some of them feels slightly rushed.

Could go Either Way

So Many Questions

There are moments in Furyborn where Legrand’s world building does shine but they’re few and far between, and we’re left with so many questions. Honestly guys, I don’t even have any clue at this point of the scale of what I don’t know.

Going into this I didn’t realise that one of the major components of the trilogy was going to be angels. When the term first popped up I went, wait, what? Then had to flip back to the blurb. Turns out, zilch. No mention. You’d think there would be for something this important to the plot. There’s all this history involving an epic war with angels, angel-human children, and a gate, but it turns out that I DIDN’T GET TO READ ABOUT ANY OF IT.

Angels aside, there’s also the political situation,  history and loss of magic, disappearance of all magical creatures, and a bunch of other things. In other words, there’s just SO MUCH POTENTIAL and yet, we didn’t get much of anything about it all. So points for where I think the world could go in future books but deducted for lack of development.

Antagonists

Corien, the antagonist in Rielle’s storyline is clearly established very early on. An angel, he’s seductive, powerful, and compelling. There’s a backstory to explore further down the track and some mystery as to why he so clearly needs Rielle. Unfortunately this element is missing in Eliana’s storyline. Yes, there’s a big, evil empire at work with a big, evil emperor but we don’t know much about them aside from the underdeveloped assassin character chasing after Eliana. Until a couple of pieces fall into place at the end of the book (in a good way), the antagonizing elements of her storyline are an ambiguous mess –  unkillable empire supporters, a rebel group Eliana isn’t sure about, another group abducting young women, just what am I supposed to focus on here? The silver lining is that this won’t be a problem in book two if the ending is anything to go by.

Overall, I’ll probably read the next book when it comes out but here’s hoping that some of the issues from this book are resolved and a couple of my million questions are answered.

3.5 Stars