Furyborn by Claire Legrand ♛ 3 Star Review

“Two Queens will rise.
One of blood. One of light.”

The prologue of this immediately sucked me in and this book had me wrapped around it’s finger. I mean a powerful female MC who ends up becoming the villain? I’ve been waiting for this book my entire life. Unfortunately, it ended up letting me down.

I have to admit that I did find the writing style to be really enjoyable and that the overall concept was a very cool idea. You have two POVs that are about 1,000 years apart from each other. One is the Sun Queen, with the power to save the world, and the other is the Blood Queen, with the power to tear everything apart. That’s what excited me about Furyborn. But that’s where the originality with this book ends.

A vast majority of the characters, including the two MCs, were extremely bland and I couldn’t connect with them whatsoever. Rielle, one of the MCs, had so much potential and I did love her through the first half of the book, Her chapters were the only things keeping me going. The last half of the book seemed to wash any interest she had away though. Eliana, the other MC had absolutely no redeemable qualities. She’s yet another special snowflake assassin that thinks she’s the baddest baddie to ever exist. Her chapters seemed to drag on and I hated the entire story-line of her life. In the end, the only ones that I liked were the two side characters Ludivine and Navi.

“Some say the Queen was frightened in her last moments. But I like to think that she was angry.”

Another thing that made me dislike this was that there were little to no plot twists. Aaryn and I literally figured everything out that was going to happen within the first 50 pages of this 500+ page book. I know that some people don’t mind this, but I usually like to be genuinely surprised by stories. I want shocks that will leave me reeling. This didn’t have that. It was all incredibly predictable and there were so many different twists that could have been utilized but just, weren’t.

Next we have the romances.. Thankfully they weren’t at the forefront of the book, but they were very lackluster to say the least. Rielle has two love interests, Audric and Corien. Her and Audric have been best friends since childhood so they actually made sense together, but it just had no flavor? I don’t know what it was about them that I didn’t like but it just felt so basic. Corien on the other hand, is the mysterious guy who had potential but just fell flat. He literally had no characterization or interests/goals other than wanting Rielle. I’m sorry but that’s not a personality. I really thought he’d be a villainous guy for me to love but alas, he was not. Then there’s Eliana’s love interests. They were so awful and literally didn’t make any sense. So I’m just gonna leave it at that.

“She was night itself reborn on earth, a queen swathed in shadows.”

Basically I enjoyed the whole aesthetic of the Sun Queen & Blood Queen over the actual queens themselves. The idea was cool. The execution was poor.

I think part of the reason I enjoyed this more than I probably should have was because I buddy read it with one of my absolute faves, Aaryn! Cracking on all of the characters and unoriginal story-lines definitely made this a lot more fun. If you wanna check out any of her socials, here are her links: Booktube, Twitter, and her Goodreads review. I honestly think that our crackpot ideas would have made a much more enjoyable book.

♛

Rating: ★★★

Overall I was mildly disappointed with this read after hearing such great things about it. However I recognize that it had potential so I’m hoping that the rest of the series will be better! Kingsbane, the second book, is already out and I have to admit, I’m still curious about a few things. I might continue on with the series, I haven’t decided yet, but it definitely won’t be anytime soon. This might be something you’re interested in if you’re a fan of Throne of Glass!

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts! Thanks for reading my review and have a lovely day!

Sail.xx