ARC Review: Furyborn (Empirium, #1)

I will be the first to admit that when I received a physical ARC of Furyborn (Empirium, #1) by Claire Legrand, in one of my FairyLoot boxes back in the fall, I thought it was going to be a really bad novel that was just trying to drum up interest by extreme marketing tactics… Y’all, I was so wrong! This book was everything and more. Basically, I’m obsessed.

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.

The Good

• Strong Opening – It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that immediately pulled me straight into the story like this one did. It just hits the ground running and doesn’t stop until the very end. I loved how engaged I was in what was happening from the first page. Why can’t all books be as entertaining as that? No, but seriously, why are some so boring? These are the types of questions that leave me up at night.
• Never A Dull Moment! – I pretty much already mentioned this, but I think it bears stating again how solid the pacing is in this book. I was never bored and couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to see what was going to happen next.
• Badass Females, Can I Get An Amen?! – Our two leading ladies are pretty awesome. They’re strong and independent and I love that they both really walk the line morally. I personally prefer characters that aren’t completely good or evil, but are realistically complex like most normal people are. I think Legrand did a great job recreating that in Rielle and Eliana. They are both are selfish and still vulnerable. It was really interesting watching how they reacted in different situations. We can go ahead and classify them both as Slytherins! 😉
• Family Love – Finally we get to see some awesome family love in a fantasy novel! Normally families tend to be nonexistent in fantasy, but in this one they actually are front and center. I absolutely loved the relationship between Eliana and her brother. It was so adorable and gave me all of the warm fuzzies!

The Bad

• Less Rielle, More Eliana – I’ll admit that I was less interested in Rielle’s chapters. Maybe because we know how her story ends from the very first chapter, that it lost a little bit of its allure for me. I was much more interested in Eliana’s storyline as you don’t know what’s going to happen next and it also had a little bit of mystery element as well. I like how the chapters alternated back and forth between the different time periods, but I think I’d like the next books to focus more on Eliana.
• I HAVE TO WAIT A WHOLE YEAR TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!!!

I obviously loved this book. I think it was an exciting opening for this new trilogy and I’m dying to see what will happen in the next book. I will say that I would personally classify this as New Adult, rather than a YA novel, as it contains sexual content (a la Maas style) and strong language. So if those are things that you don’t care for in books, then this may not be the right fit for you. But if you don’t mind that, then pick this book up because it’s awesome!!!

Final Verdict: 5/5 Stars

Have you read Furyborn yet? If so, what did you think of it? Did you enjoy Eliana or Rielle’s chapters more?