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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
I was overwhelmed at the start with everything that was happening. As we progressed Rielle's perspective started to make sense but not Eliana's. In the end I decided I wasn't interested and I just wanted to be reading something else.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Thought it was decent, not amazing, not awful. Kept me entertained in the very least. The different povs/timelines take a second to get used to.
I saw this book recommended on one of the pages I follow for book recs and I was a little hesitant when I saw the review score at 3.79 because I read a lot and typically I don't enjoy books that are rated below 4.0. I have been reading this book over the last few days and I finished it yesterday and sat with it to see if my opinion would change after a bit but unfortunately it hasn't. I found the number of characters to be too high and it was hard to follow. As a reader. I didn't really connect with any of the characters in particular, and I didn't really believe the love story between the two separate love stories the author was building. Overall I didn't really enjoy it at all. I'm still confused about time jumps and location jumps a bit and if someone asked me what this book was about I would have to think really hard about it to explain it. That's not how it should be after reading a book in its entirety. I won't be continuing this series.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
medium-paced
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
"furyborn" tells the story of two women with a thousand years separating them but their stories are linked together by the powers they share and the prophecy that joins them.
i'm trying to come up with something clever or witty or put together to say about this book but the truth is i don't really have an opinion. i was tempted to dnf more times that i have fingers and ended up getting bored and interested in a never ending cycle until the book ended. i don't have a put together way of telling my thoughts so instead we are going to have a bullet list!
SPOILERS continue if you don't care, of if you plan to read this book in the future but have a bad memory (u know who u are.... <3)
* the dual povs fucked up the pace of the book SEVERELY for me. i would get interested in rielle's pov and just as i was getting immersed in her story, it would do a hard cut to elianna, which would take me out of the story, and just when i was brought back in i was yanked out in the next chapter. having the two story lines together that eventually weave together is interesting, but the way it was done just continued to take me out of the story and also fucked up the pacing in the individual story lines
* LOVED rielle at the beginning, couldn't stand her at the end. i know she going on her #villianjourney but i personally just couldn't find her very likable T-T she gave the vibe of someone in high school who would mansplain how ~deep~ attack on titan is EVEN THO WE ALL KNOW. someone who flexes her intelligence and strength while being the dumbest bitch on the planet.
* ELIANNA WAS SUCH A PICK ME OMG. "i'm not like other girls, i'm a killer!" SHUT. UP! i'm all behind tortured assassin who doesn't mind killing people, i'm all behind it, but dear god at least make them likable. i liked elianna at the end, and her story was by far the most interesting out of the two but elianna was the main factor of my contemplation for dnf'ing.
* corien. don't. even. get. me. started. i HATE, HATE the plotline of this young (usually underage) girl who has immense power getting groomed by this dark, "hot", usually shadowy figure who ends up completely screwing her over but yet the girl still crawls back to him. this was done in "shadow and bone" and it was done here with corien and rielle and i despise it. i understand the reasoning behind the trope; it;s meant to show the corruption of purity and how younger girls are led down these paths by attractive men who are the real monsters. but this book does not make that distinction. corien is the voice in rielle's head that urges her to use her powers in increasingly worrying ways- sick, awesome, i see the idea! however when he starts to "stroke" her mind and rielle caves immediately because he's attractive (despite claiming to be madly in love with audric btw) AND HAS A SEX DREAM ABOUT HIM THEN PROMPTLY WAKES UP AND RUBS ONE OUT it genuinely boggles me. she has no reason to trust him! no reason to find him attractive! he. has. NO. body!!!! i don't know why she liked corien at all, i can get having sex dream but being into him?? GIRL NO. it's a personal hatred of the trope i have which made me HATE this part and turned rielle into this fickle girl instead of someone who is genuinely corrupted and turned evil as we see later.
*SIMON- dude i would be like "i can get behind this guy!" then he would say some shit like "my sins have been absolved by The Prophet" and my cooch would close. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE PROPHET?? ARE U MORMON?? that was my general vibe with simon- he was a complex character that I could get behind and then would drop some shit like that or say something misogynistic and the vibe would die. him and elianna match each other rlly well tho
*sex positive- while i did bitch about rielle and corien (don't get me started again) i found the way the female mcs talked about and engaged in sex to be a breath of fresh air. they engaged in sex and had those feelings and it was never treated as something against them or something empowering for them, it was something they did because they wanted to. very refreshing for fantasy in 2018 and i did appreciate that!
*magic system: guy idk what was going on with the magic, i just nodded and moved on LMAO. if u asked me about the magic system rn, i couldn't tell you
*elianna's plot midway through the book: best part hands down. elianna mid-book was what convinced me to finish this book, her being stuck among these rebels after killing some of them and having to keep her brother safe? banger. best part of the book
kk now i'm done. i know it sounds like i hated this book, but i didn't rlly, it was a read. i don't remember most of it T-T it was okay, solid three stars.
i'm trying to come up with something clever or witty or put together to say about this book but the truth is i don't really have an opinion. i was tempted to dnf more times that i have fingers and ended up getting bored and interested in a never ending cycle until the book ended. i don't have a put together way of telling my thoughts so instead we are going to have a bullet list!
SPOILERS continue if you don't care, of if you plan to read this book in the future but have a bad memory (u know who u are.... <3)
* the dual povs fucked up the pace of the book SEVERELY for me. i would get interested in rielle's pov and just as i was getting immersed in her story, it would do a hard cut to elianna, which would take me out of the story, and just when i was brought back in i was yanked out in the next chapter. having the two story lines together that eventually weave together is interesting, but the way it was done just continued to take me out of the story and also fucked up the pacing in the individual story lines
* LOVED rielle at the beginning, couldn't stand her at the end. i know she going on her #villianjourney but i personally just couldn't find her very likable T-T she gave the vibe of someone in high school who would mansplain how ~deep~ attack on titan is EVEN THO WE ALL KNOW. someone who flexes her intelligence and strength while being the dumbest bitch on the planet.
* ELIANNA WAS SUCH A PICK ME OMG. "i'm not like other girls, i'm a killer!" SHUT. UP! i'm all behind tortured assassin who doesn't mind killing people, i'm all behind it, but dear god at least make them likable. i liked elianna at the end, and her story was by far the most interesting out of the two but elianna was the main factor of my contemplation for dnf'ing.
* corien. don't. even. get. me. started. i HATE, HATE the plotline of this young (usually underage) girl who has immense power getting groomed by this dark, "hot", usually shadowy figure who ends up completely screwing her over but yet the girl still crawls back to him. this was done in "shadow and bone" and it was done here with corien and rielle and i despise it. i understand the reasoning behind the trope; it;s meant to show the corruption of purity and how younger girls are led down these paths by attractive men who are the real monsters. but this book does not make that distinction. corien is the voice in rielle's head that urges her to use her powers in increasingly worrying ways- sick, awesome, i see the idea! however when he starts to "stroke" her mind and rielle caves immediately because he's attractive (despite claiming to be madly in love with audric btw) AND HAS A SEX DREAM ABOUT HIM THEN PROMPTLY WAKES UP AND RUBS ONE OUT it genuinely boggles me. she has no reason to trust him! no reason to find him attractive! he. has. NO. body!!!! i don't know why she liked corien at all, i can get having sex dream but being into him?? GIRL NO. it's a personal hatred of the trope i have which made me HATE this part and turned rielle into this fickle girl instead of someone who is genuinely corrupted and turned evil as we see later.
*SIMON- dude i would be like "i can get behind this guy!" then he would say some shit like "my sins have been absolved by The Prophet" and my cooch would close. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE PROPHET?? ARE U MORMON?? that was my general vibe with simon- he was a complex character that I could get behind and then would drop some shit like that or say something misogynistic and the vibe would die. him and elianna match each other rlly well tho
*sex positive- while i did bitch about rielle and corien (don't get me started again) i found the way the female mcs talked about and engaged in sex to be a breath of fresh air. they engaged in sex and had those feelings and it was never treated as something against them or something empowering for them, it was something they did because they wanted to. very refreshing for fantasy in 2018 and i did appreciate that!
*magic system: guy idk what was going on with the magic, i just nodded and moved on LMAO. if u asked me about the magic system rn, i couldn't tell you
*elianna's plot midway through the book: best part hands down. elianna mid-book was what convinced me to finish this book, her being stuck among these rebels after killing some of them and having to keep her brother safe? banger. best part of the book
kk now i'm done. i know it sounds like i hated this book, but i didn't rlly, it was a read. i don't remember most of it T-T it was okay, solid three stars.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
(4.5—closer to a 5 than a 4 but i’ve been giving out so many 5 stars lately i need to even out my ratio)
no one out here writing better characters than claire legrand i said it i said it
EDIT 5/6/2020 (now that I've had some time to process this):
Wow it feels SO GOOD to dive back into a fantasy that was a joy to read from start to finish!! It took me forever to pick this up, knowing that I would love it, and was not disappointed. That’s not to say that the book doesn’t have problems, and I totally get the mixed reviews of this book, but I was willing to overlook a lot of that because so many of the tropes in here really spoke to me. Great characters and romance in a fascinating premise with a fine execution.
THINGS I LOVED:
-Rielle and Eliana, the two main characters, were SO GOOD and so easy to root for, and seeing their similarities and differences examined throughout the book was such an interesting character study. They’re very different in so many different ways, but they were two kinds of female protagonists that I really love to read about. Seeing the moral ambiguity they both struggle with was so captivating.
-VERY strong side characters—Claire LeGrand really has a gift for writing great characters! I can’t think of a single character in this book that I disliked reading about—even the villains were so fun to hate and sort of sympathetic!
-THE ROMANCE. I ship everyone with everyone and I don’t feel bad about it. Definitely way steamy for YA (still not sure if this is YA or adult but it definitely reads like both)
-Although an elemental magic system is certainly nothing new in fantasy, this system was really cool to read about, especially with each element’s association with a casting, a saint, a country, etc.
THINGS I DIDN’T:
-The biggest flaw a fantasy often suffers from is a slow start, and this book was no exception. The first 100 pages or so were a struggle to read from, as I couldn’t really see where the story was going. Even once we were on track, I wasn’t really compelled to follow along in some places until about halfway through. Thankfully compelling characters and relationship dynamics helped me bridge the gap into the exciting parts of the plot.
-That being said, the strong point of this book is the characters. If you’re looking for a fast-paced or exciting plot, this isn’t the book for you. But as someone who seeks out character-driven plots and stories, this was right up my alley.
-To piggyback on this, the book is heavily laden with plot conveniences to carry the story along. Things would happen and it felt like we weren’t supposed to question them; it was a thinly veiled passage to get us from point A to point B. (It did their job, though, because I was having too much fun to really stop and question!)
-Most ??? part of this book is the way some reveals are handled; lots of the book is “spoiled” in the prologue so as characters in a later timeline make their own revelations about what we, the audience, already know, it was hard to tell if the author wanted those reveals to emotionally land with us as well, considering that we already knew them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it was definitely weird and a new experience to me as a reader.
OVERALL I would highly recommend this book as I really enjoyed it; I went into detail about a lot of my dislikes but overall they were easy to gloss over because my enjoyment of the book and the characters really overshadowed any big problems I had. My expectations were sort of low based on the mixed reviews I’d heard, and even as I read I was expecting the story to sag under the vast scope of the plot, but I was happily proven wrong!!
no one out here writing better characters than claire legrand i said it i said it
EDIT 5/6/2020 (now that I've had some time to process this):
Wow it feels SO GOOD to dive back into a fantasy that was a joy to read from start to finish!! It took me forever to pick this up, knowing that I would love it, and was not disappointed. That’s not to say that the book doesn’t have problems, and I totally get the mixed reviews of this book, but I was willing to overlook a lot of that because so many of the tropes in here really spoke to me. Great characters and romance in a fascinating premise with a fine execution.
THINGS I LOVED:
-Rielle and Eliana, the two main characters, were SO GOOD and so easy to root for, and seeing their similarities and differences examined throughout the book was such an interesting character study. They’re very different in so many different ways, but they were two kinds of female protagonists that I really love to read about. Seeing the moral ambiguity they both struggle with was so captivating.
-VERY strong side characters—Claire LeGrand really has a gift for writing great characters! I can’t think of a single character in this book that I disliked reading about—even the villains were so fun to hate and sort of sympathetic!
-THE ROMANCE. I ship everyone with everyone and I don’t feel bad about it. Definitely way steamy for YA (still not sure if this is YA or adult but it definitely reads like both)
-Although an elemental magic system is certainly nothing new in fantasy, this system was really cool to read about, especially with each element’s association with a casting, a saint, a country, etc.
THINGS I DIDN’T:
-The biggest flaw a fantasy often suffers from is a slow start, and this book was no exception. The first 100 pages or so were a struggle to read from, as I couldn’t really see where the story was going. Even once we were on track, I wasn’t really compelled to follow along in some places until about halfway through. Thankfully compelling characters and relationship dynamics helped me bridge the gap into the exciting parts of the plot.
-That being said, the strong point of this book is the characters. If you’re looking for a fast-paced or exciting plot, this isn’t the book for you. But as someone who seeks out character-driven plots and stories, this was right up my alley.
-To piggyback on this, the book is heavily laden with plot conveniences to carry the story along. Things would happen and it felt like we weren’t supposed to question them; it was a thinly veiled passage to get us from point A to point B. (It did their job, though, because I was having too much fun to really stop and question!)
-Most ??? part of this book is the way some reveals are handled; lots of the book is “spoiled” in the prologue so as characters in a later timeline make their own revelations about what we, the audience, already know, it was hard to tell if the author wanted those reveals to emotionally land with us as well, considering that we already knew them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it was definitely weird and a new experience to me as a reader.
OVERALL I would highly recommend this book as I really enjoyed it; I went into detail about a lot of my dislikes but overall they were easy to gloss over because my enjoyment of the book and the characters really overshadowed any big problems I had. My expectations were sort of low based on the mixed reviews I’d heard, and even as I read I was expecting the story to sag under the vast scope of the plot, but I was happily proven wrong!!
I was able to read this ebook through NetGalley!
There were some things I really loved and disliked about this book. I absolutely loved the weaving of the 2 stories. Even though they were told thousands of years apart, Legrand still made it so that you were interested. The differing moral complexities of the protagonists (Eliana and Rielle) was also a job well done. They were distinct, and Rielle was likable.
I thought that Eliana's story dragged a little. I just wasn't interested in it. It's surprising because that is the present perspective, but I just didn't care-- and I kept on forgetting that her mother, brother, etc. even existed...
You have to be a fan of fantasy and really willing to immerse yourself in a different world for this book. For younger readers, the very beginning is a little confusing, but it definitely is worth it to push through. I would recommend this to fantasy loving high schoolers. There's sex, language, etc.
There were some things I really loved and disliked about this book. I absolutely loved the weaving of the 2 stories. Even though they were told thousands of years apart, Legrand still made it so that you were interested. The differing moral complexities of the protagonists (Eliana and Rielle) was also a job well done. They were distinct, and Rielle was likable.
I thought that Eliana's story dragged a little. I just wasn't interested in it. It's surprising because that is the present perspective, but I just didn't care-- and I kept on forgetting that her mother, brother, etc. even existed...
You have to be a fan of fantasy and really willing to immerse yourself in a different world for this book. For younger readers, the very beginning is a little confusing, but it definitely is worth it to push through. I would recommend this to fantasy loving high schoolers. There's sex, language, etc.
ok this book was kind of hard to get into but I’m thoroughly obsessed with it now and cannot start the next one quickly enough