Furyborn grabbed me from the first page and never let go. It was a wild ride of an adventure that I was thrilled to go on. Everything about it was fun and exciting and more than a little dark at times. And, there were angels!

The writing was strong, the world well developed and the characters were well defined with wonderfully evil bad guys. It was just such a fun story to read. My one complaint would be the wait between books. This is not a story you want to put down and wait a year for the next installment. Also, I was surprised at the sexual content of the book. It was more graphic than I have previously seen in a YA book. Just a heads up.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I really enjoyed this book! The beginning was a bit confusing because of the switching point of views, but once I got into both the stories I was hooked. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and their complexities! The plot was fast paced and kept the reader guessing. We knew boys and pieces from the beginning and then had to figure out how those pieces fit into the current story. The weaving of takes was great and i would definitely give this to a friend! I can’t wait for the next book!

Do you like angels, mystical powers, death, hope, blood, romance, death, awesome characters, awesome worldbuilding, and death? Well, does Claire LeGrand have a story for you. But all kidding aside, I absolutely enjoyed this book and am already impatiently awaiting the next one (fingers crossed I get another ARC!). Parallel storylines is a common enough literary device that it can get tiring but the way it's handled in this book is utterly refreshing. Additionally, you never feel like you don't understand the motivations of a character even if you only met them a paragraph ago and will never see them in the book again. Would and will highly recommend to everyone.

I really enjoyed reading this book! Thank you so much to the publishers for the ARC.
It was slow paced at first and took me a while to get into the story and process all of the information but with patience I was able to immerse myself into this epic fantasy world.
The story revolved around the narratives of Eliana and Rielle, one from the past and one from present day. This book has everything needed to relax and dive into an awesome atmosphere with magic, castles, assasins, good deads and plenty of confusing bad ones. It was quiet the roller coaster ride. Two quees, propheicies, a kindgoms at stake, a love interest here and there..whats not to like?
I wouldn't recommend to a novice reader or someone who only reads the occasions fun book at the beach because its a bit long and intense and difficult to begin.
Overally great writing, great characters and fantastic world buiding!! I can't wait for the next book in the series!

Furyborn The Empirium, is a young adult novel and the first of a trilogy, that I plan to make sure I read all three. It is written in the vein of Game Of Thrones but not as “drastic”.

In Book One, we meet Rielle the mother of Eliana – the author shifts back and forth in time to tell the story of these two women. It is well done and I had no problems keeping up as it can happen at times when this method is used. The story is so magical that I didn’t want to put it down. The author does an excellent job setting the stage for the next book. And it looks like this could become a movie.

I highly recommend you read if you like magical creatures, angels and the like. This is a well-written book with characters that will have you turning the pages until the end.

Reviewed by: Linda C.

This book was a quick read and pretty fun for the first two-thirds. Then it got too much sex and reminded me of other series too much, ie. the Shadow and Bone, the Glass Throne, and even The Hunger Games, that I was just ready for it to be done.

Pros: Two strong female characters who were mostly likable. Good action and a good villain. An interesting storyline and setting.

Cons: Weak male characters; the romantic interests were too mild and perfect. The sex scenes were not needed. Imitated other books too much.

I received an electronic copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

I didn’t read the synopsis of this book before diving right in. When you have a cover like Furyborn’s, you’re automatically curious about the contents, and I was not disappointed.

Furyborn follows two women who are living a thousand years apart. There doesn’t appear to be any common thread between them: one is a lady at a prominent court (Rielle), while the other is an assassin working to protect her family against the wrath of a sinister empire that’s overtaken the world (Eliana).

Each chapter alternates between the two women and weave separate stories that feel for the majority of the book like you’re getting two YA books at the same time. They’re separate enough that they feel like their own thing... until the pieces start falling into place and the truth of the matter starts to make itself known.

Coming off of reading Caraval, I was a little disappointed with Furyborn. Not because it wasn’t good but because I felt like I didn’t really get enough answers to make it feel as though it stood alone. With Caraval, I wanted to continue with the books to follow but I felt satisfied with what had been presented to me. Furyborn doesn’t have that same feeling. The book ends just as I feel as though we were starting to get answers, and I desperately wanted more.

That being said, Furyborn is a marvel in worldbuilding. Claire Legrand has expertly told this story with not one but TWO compelling protagonists that have so many layers to them.

I wanted to have more answers right away but Legrand has hooked me and I absolutely need to know what happens to both Rielle and Eliana.

Verdict:
Read it! I think it’s a great YA book that many will love. Fans of Sarah J. Maas’ books will eat Furyborn up.

This first book in a new fantasy trilogy for young adults features many elements readers of this genre will find familiar. There are life-and-death challenges with fancy costumes a la “The Hunger Games” (along with two competing male suitors); manipulation of one type of matter at its most fundamental level by select magicians, along with a special person - a “Sun Queen” who can manipulate all of them a la Leigh Bardugo’s “Grishaverse”; angels who make war on humans a la Laini Taylor’s Smoke and Bone trilogy; and so on. Thank heavens in this fantasy world there are no high schools, or I imagine we would see incognito angels there as well. But never fear; even without high schools, there are love triangles.

All this echoing of other trilogies means there are a lot of world-building elements to digest. We do so as we follow the stories of two young women a millennium apart in time, Reille and Eliana, each of whom is suspected of being one of the two foretold queens of legend. One of these will be the“Sun Queen,” who will save the world from the angels, and one will be the “Blood Queen” who will destroy it on their behalf. It isn’t clear yet which girl is supposed to be which queen.

And just to keep our interest elevated, there is a hot romance with a possible rival in each time period.

Almost every chapter (they switch back and forth between the female protagonists) ends with its own cliffhanger. The book itself ends without any conclusions for either Rielle or Eliana. Readers will just have to wait for the next installment.

Evaluation: The plot may be derivative of multiple others, but it’s still fun.

I loved this book! I can’t wait for the next in the series. It was fast paced but good world building, without large info dumps which can be tedious. I liked that the romance wasn’t the focus and that the two female characters were both strong in their own unique ways.

Unfortunately, Furyborn was not the book for me. I had a very hard time identifying with the two main protagonists and felt that the writing was just not engaging to me. I do, however, appreciate the advance copy and hope that others will enjoy this book more than I did!

An enjoyable fantasy story, not without a few hitches, but this one will have me going back for the sequel—as yet, still Untitled.

From the beginning, through several sets of introductions to characters, plots, and settings, the novel felt confusing and busy. An easy case of too many characters and too quick a rotation through their points-of-view. Here, in the first act (assuming the three-act structure) the novel dips quite often into the skimmable realm and the characters, at various times, feel fairly standard and stock with predictable voices.

Rielle—heroine number one—brings intrigue, power, and mystery to the table and is an easy character to like and care about. Her relationships with her friends and her mentor all feel very authentic and Legrand avoids many tropes often found in this kind of fantasy structure. There are no "mean girls," no overlording villainous court figure, and no unnecessary wavering of character and spirit. No one is hung up on all the decisions. Everyone seems to know his or her own mind, for the most part, and they play their roles accordingly.

Immediately, I liked Simon's POV, but was disappointed to find that he never takes over the narration again. Simon, a character not even mentioned in the book's summary, plays a pivotal role throughout the story, but he's never really given enough attention beyond that opening. The novel would've been improved if we didn't follow Eliana and instead got the benefit of Simon. He has more of an internal struggle with which we can identify (failure, anyone?) and seeing Eliana through his eyes would've smoothed out some of those rough edges Eliana brings.

Getting to know Eliana was a little more difficult. While I really liked that she is apparently interested in both sexes (how often is there a true main character who is bisexual?), I was disappointed from that angle that it wasn't explored more—but there are more novels to come, so we shall see. There are a pair of husbands who were tertiary characters, but who leveled out the diversity nicely in that area. Anytime a same-sex couple can be portrayed as ordinary and even introduced with all the nonchalance of it being no big deal, I'm in. But that's not my main issue with this character....

To me, Eliana seems like a faux-badass. Like she’s a badass until real badasses are present and then her badassery is diminished to something lesser and common. I don't know...just the lack of oomph from her character despite what I was told as we began her story. The Dread/Eliana was often caught unawares and she seemed to be thrown off her game quite often. Regardless, she felt more written than the other characters, and less real because of it.

Act two picks up the pace and really holds this story together. My interest level increased tremendously and I was ready for the story to break wide open. Once the trials began for Rielle, everything about this book improved markedly. Legrand really shines here with her ability to properly write both a fight action sequence and a magical obstacle course of sorts (for lack of a better term). Neither was overwritten or improperly paced—instead we had the necessary pull for wanting to continue reading. Skimmable pages—gone.

Unfortunately, we lost a bit of that engaging facet once we were in the third and final act of the story. Uneven delivery, pacing, characterization, and plot development leads to more questions than are necessary for a finale—even with the understanding that its part of a larger story to be concluded through later installments. The triangle between Ludivine, Rielle, and Audric felt grounded in the triangle created by the characters Scarlett O’Hara, Ashley Wilkes, and Melanie Hamilton for a while—it did eventually out itself properly and shake off any phoniness.

Eliana feels utterly laden with weaponry. And all those weapons all seem to be named with rather atypical names for swords, daggers, knives, and such. The weapon-pack-mule, coupled with an odd and sudden change in her dealings with Simon—which seems nearly out of character for her, or a rushed character evolution, she began to feel very forced and wrongly shaped. It was as though there was far more going on in the author's head than what appears in print.

However, the overall story is still intriguing and there were many questions from the ending that remain unanswered. Questions for which I do want answers. I hope there is improvement in the sequel that will bolster the need for a continuing series. Good beginnings.

This is the story of two Queens, The Queen of Light and the Queen of Blood. The Queen of Light is prophesied to bring peace and protection to Celdaria. The Queen of Blood will bring death and destruction. Rielle is a gifted child who lost her mother in a fire created out of Rielle's anger. No one knew the portend that this event would bring 13 years later. Eliana lives a lifetime away in a future that is filled with no light. Magical gifts are gone. There is only the Imperial Army and the mysterious disappearance of women in the night. What is the connection between the two? Angels. Angels seek to return to this world. They want to dominate it with the power of the Queen of Blood. She holds the key to destroying the Gate which has kept them at bay for more than a thousand years. Eliana is an unlikely hero. She is a cutthroat assassin. She makes her living by doing the Empire's bidding. Unknowingly, if the Empire knew who she was, she would be their greatest weapon.

This is a story about lies, love, death and magic. Truth is hidden away from loved ones. It is believed this is to protect them but of course it only leads to pain and suffering for all involved. The story shares the rise of Rielle to her place as the Queen of Light as she becomes the Queen of Blood. Eliana meanwhile discovers her birthright. She is all that stands between the Emperor and the people of the land.

Negative part first: I wanted to love this book; I read this book twice, but for some reason, I do not like it. I couldn't care enough about either main character and what they were experiencing. Now for the positive: There are some very beautifully written lines in the book. There is also a considerable amount of world building achieved, both in the ancient and the modern perspectives. I also enjoyed the different plot twists, from a writer's perspective rather than a reader's. Overall, I can see why some like this book, and I admit that I will probably pick up the next installment at some point. Yet, I am not anxiously waiting. I would recommend this book to reads who enjoy fantasy YA lit, and I hope they are able to bridge the disconnect that seemed to keep me from loving this book.

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is such an engrossing read! I couldn't put it down and am anxiously awaiting the next installment.

Take all the most incredibly creative ingredients from other fantasy novels: shades of HP (tournament, dementors, trio of friends, prophecies), Hunger Games trilogy (tournament costumes), Game of Thrones series (army of the dead, flying creatures), Shadow and Bone trilogy (different magical skills for cliques of people), Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy (angels for antagonists). And now mix it all together with Claire Legrand's natural affinity for gorgeous writing, a creative and beautifully drawn fantasy world, a gripping plot, and complex and deeply developed characters, and here is a new hit fantasy series. This book is wicked good; its characters invaded my nighttime dreams, made me stay up waaaay too late at night, and made me voraciously hungry for the second book.

One of the best YA I've read in ages. Extremely compelling and unputdownable. The "surprises" in the book aren't surprising at all, but it doesn't seem like they're meant to be particularly shocking, so it's fine. Opening the book with the end of Rielle's story is an interesting choice and one that works really well here, so we frame her story as a tragic hero, who cannot escape her fate, which is interesting and unusual in YA.

Eliana Ferracora is a bounty hunter working for the Undying Empire, doing despicable things in order to secure the survival of her family. When her mother disappears and the very empire she’s working for turns against her, Eliana leaves on a harrowing journey with her younger brother Remy, joining the rebels Eliana has worked so hard to capture and thwart. Remy tells stories of angels and magic, which Eliana dismisses as no more than a fairytale, but the history she makes light of is more real than she thinks… A thousand years earlier, Rielle Dardenne risks everything when assassins ambush her best friend, and everyone comes to know what Rielle has worked so hard to keep secret: that she has the magical powers that show her to be one of the prophesied Queens of legend. To prove that she is the Sun Queen and not the Blood Queen, Rielle undergoes trials that showcase her magical ability. If the kingdom believes her to be the Blood Queen, she will be executed, but the trials are such that they might kill her anyway. Rielle and Eliana’s story intersects in ways that will determine the fate of their world, and each other.

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The world building in Furyborn is excellent, from the politics of each setting to the stark realities of war. The magic and religion was most interesting to me, and Legrand does a fair job there, although I certainly wished that there was more covered in this book. Such are the perils of reading the first book in a series, though! Legrand’s prose is descriptive and immersive, making the reader feel as of they are truly part of the story, and they can easily imagine all of the various characters and settings.

The characters are fully developed and compelling, all with their own motives, fears, desires and flaws. I have to admit that at times I found both of the protagonists a bit trying, but as the reader that’s easy to do, since we have the luxury of perspective and not having to go through what the characters do. What matters is that I can understand why Eliana or Rielle might act a certain way or do something in particular, and even though I may not agree with it or even may find it morally reprehensible, it is a rare gift in a writer to make me understand and empathize even though I know something to be wrong in the grand scheme of things.

I also super loved that there were LGBT+ characters represented in the book, from the main character to side characters. Media representation of marginalized communities is definitely something that I feel strongly about, and I was really pleased to see this handled well here. There was no homophobia or biphobia which was definitely refreshing - a male character having a husband, or a female character hooking up in the past with another woman who made her black out, is just a fact of the world, not something remarkable, which in and of itself is remarkable. Well done, Legrand.

Something that was a little disorienting was that while this book is being marketed as young adult, it does include a fairly explicit sex scene as well as numerous instances of profanity, which is…unusual. At least, in regard to the YA genre as far as the books I’ve read. I’m far from a prude but it just seemed at odds with the rest of the book and the marketing.

Overall the book was compelling and a fun fantasy read. I look forward to seeing the future installments in the series to see how everything plays out!

This book was absolutely amazing. The characters were well thought out, the story flowed wonderfully. Definitely highly recommend!! The world building was exceptional as well.

This book reminded me a little of Red Queen (literally there's a group in the book called Red Crown) and a little bit of H.P. in Goblet of Fire. Except Rielle has more spunk and fight in her and the people cheering her on have a debatable amount of reliability (I'm looking at you, Corien). Seriously though, love the girl power in this one.

The first chapter really sucks you in. I've started to like fantasies less and less over the years but this one was fantastic. It's told from two points of view, Rielle and Eliana. I enjoyed Rielle's viewpoint more and found myself very sympathetic with her, despite the fact that she's supposed to be the "bad" one. I'm thinking future books will be more revealing. I felt like about half way though the book I caught on to twist referenced in the first chapter.. Now I need more info about how that happened! I went back and reread the first chapter and felt like that really enhanced my understanding of the book. I need more!!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2249289766?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1