Kingsbane is the second book in the Empirium series by Claire Legrand. Picking up shortly after the end of Furyborn we continue the story of Rielle and Eliana. Rielle is now anointed as the Sun Queen and is openly in a relationship with Audric. However, things are not yet peaceful for her as she is still haunted by Corien even as she spies on him to help Audric protect Celdaria. His promises of freedom are alluring to impetuous Rielle, more so when she discovers that the gate to the realm holding the angels is failing and she may have just made it worse. Now she must resist temptation as she collects the castings of the seven saints in an attempt to repair the gate. Meanwhile, a thousand years in the future Eliana is struggling to accept that she is the daughter of Rielle and Audric because she fears what that means for her. Having grown up with stories about Rielle, Eliana fears the temptation and corruption of having that much power. With her friend Navi dying though Eliana must learn to face and accept her heritage, her crown and ultimately her own power.
This book was good and did a good job of continuing the story but I also felt like it was easily predictable. Perhaps that was just because of the dual timelines but I honestly felt like Rielle’s storyline in particular held very few surprises. It was still well written and Rielle is ultimately an extremely compelling character to make up for that. You can easily picture just how torn she is between Audric and Corien and the temptation surrounding her and the ambition driving her. Knowing the outcome you can see where she is likely to falter, even if she doesn’t mean to. In comparison, Eliana is just as compelling and just as driven. However, she is also much less ambitious than Rielle and much less vain, so to speak. Rielle has little concern for what the public think of her and stays focused instead on her family and friends. It creates this completely different tension within her as she doesn’t want the power because she doesn’t want to become a monster but she ultimately accepts it or is at least willing to learn more about it since it can help her save her friends. Having this dual timeline and storyline creates this intense dichotomy within the story. One character that you want to support and want to win but know will ultimately fail and a different character created by the failure of the first one and still having an unknown outcome but that you also want to win for entirely different reasons. I will say that while the story is pretty good there are a few things I am not a fan of. The first one is the constant flipping timelines. It goes back and forth in every chapter which constantly interrupts both narratives. I somewhat enjoy getting both storylines but I also find it somewhat difficult to track both storylines. Another thing I don’t like is how we know the ultimate outcome of one storyline because of the existence of the other storyline. Sure we may not know the exact details but we do know many of the broad strokes. I feel like that kind of lessens the sense of tension for that character. It may just be me though. This book is getting four out of five stars from me.
A good example of young adult fantasy and will probably appeal to many modern young adults. If you enjoy fantasy you might consider this series, especially if you enjoy reluctant heroes and mysterious powers. I highly doubt it will hold a lot of appeal for other readers though. This book is aimed at young adults and I would stand by that but also state that I would be careful about letting younger readers try it. There is a considerable amount of adult and mature content throughout the entire book and while not overly explicit it does come pretty close so I would recommend no readers younger than about sixteen. It was good so I hope you will still consider it and if you do feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.