Furyborn is the first book in The Empirium series by Claire Legrand and is a bit of an unusual book. The story starts with Queen Rielle trying to protect her daughter from an angel named Corien by placing her in the care of Simon who can use magic to travel. It then splits into two storylines, one before and one after these events. The before timeline goes back a few years and follows Rielle after she unintentionally revealed her multiple elemental powers to save her best friend Prince Audric. By doing so people start believing she is one of the two prophesied queens meant to save their world and now she must navigate the results of that belief. The after timeline jumps forward a thousand years and follows Eliana Ferracora, a bounty hunter and assassin for the Undying Empire. For her, Rielle and magic are nothing more than a fairytale. At least right up until she discovers that things about the Empire and about the Emperor are not what she was told and now she may have to fight them in order to protect herself and her family. Something which may also reveal things about her own past in the process.
This book was weird, at least for me, because a vast majority of the subtext and the foreshadowing was really obvious. I was not surprised in the least by the various big reveals. A huge part of that was because of the way the story was written which I actually found rather intriguing. The dual timelines and dual narratives is definitely not something I see a lot of in literature though I have seen a prologue based in the future before the actual narrative shifts back to explain what led to that. It was the splitting of the narrative from there that was unfamiliar. While this did allow for simultaneous narration of both the before and after it also resulted in fewer surprises about the connections between the timelines because we were able to see both sides of the coin, so to speak. The actual story itself was fairly unique because of this splitting though I did notice many familiar elements that I have seen before. One of the things that really grabbed my attention though was the characters internal struggles. Both Rielle and Eliana have this struggle where they want to be one thing and strive desperately to do so but are continuously worried about becoming something else instead. It creates this dual level of struggle, both within and without, that really helps heighten the overall feeling of struggle that is represent throughout the novel. What makes this works though is that when we are reading Eliana’s perspective we get hints about what happened to Rielle which actually makes it harder to read about her struggles while knowing the potential outcome already. It was all superbly handled though and was a really great read so I found myself rather enjoying the story overall. I am happy giving it four out of five stars.
This book is classed as young adult fantasy and is a pretty good example of that. This book would probably hold the most appeal for young adult readers who enjoy the fantasy genre though I am not sure how well it would appeal to other readers. Now I said this book is classed as young adult and considering the characters are that age range I would mostly agree with that. However, there are numerous references to adult and mature content as well as significant amount of violence so I would recommend it mostly to the older end of that age spectrum, readers older than about seventeen or eighteen. I would feel uncomfortable with younger teens reading it. It is still a good book though so if you do decide to try it feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.