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A review by make_tea_and_read
Furyborn by Claire Legrand
2.0
This was an ARC that I was very excited to read but it took me a long time to finish it.
The plot of this story sounded so great, but it wasn't what I expected once I started reading. The two Queens were not great characters. I preferred Rielle and I did start to like her a little eventually but Eliana was so awful (not a character you hate but is a good written character... she just isn't a good character in any way).
I know many people loved the prologue but I really did not enjoy it as it gave away a lot of things. You read the rest of the book just waiting for them to happen and it took away some of the things that could have been a good surprise. Such as...
The chapters alternate between Rielle's viewpoint and Eliana's viewpoint. I don't usually mind this in books but this one was not done well. Some chapters were so short and it swapped viewpoints so often and quickly that you couldn't get into a character and the situation before you were moved to the other again.
Rielle has to endure 7 trials for the elements. All of the trials are similar in how they play out that they become boring and annoying. A couple of the trials were a mere 7 pages (in the ARC version I had). 7 pages from start to finish (build up to end). These trials could've been fantastic but they were over as quickly as they began. Another thing I found annoying was that at every trial Rielle knows she has to show her control over the elements yet she wastes time trying to just run away from the element coming at her. This made the trials even more annoying and short as once she remembered she has to show her control she just... does it and wins, the end. Every trial is the exact same in terms of what she does. She tries to run from it, uses her power, easily wins. In a very short amount of time, literally nothing else happens in them.
Eliana's character is just an awful person. She truly is once of the most unnecessarily nasty (in places) characters I have ever read. I get that she is meant to be tough and independent and fierce but at many instances throughout the book she is nasty for no reason whatsoever. This adds nothing to her character apart from me disliking her as some parts were just downright unnecessary.
One of the biggest issues I had with the book overall was the world building. There is none. I couldn't even tell you what the worlds were like I had only my own imagination to try and come up with something as there is shockingly little world building for a book with 2 separate time periods and 7 deadly trials. You have nothing to go on. The metal trial was the hardest part of the book to get through for me, I genuinely had no idea what the trial was meant to be. I had some weird image of a pit of spikes and girders that moved but that was it.
This book is like a 2nd book rather than a first book in a series. It read as if we had already had the world building and the build up to it and this book was the next book along. If this was a second book then it may not have been as bad (as long as the first was good of course). It definitely didn't seem like the first book in a trilogy. There was no explanations to how the magic works, the elements and castings. All we know is some people can perform it and Rielle can just do it all.
I may chose to read the second one, but I wont be paying full price for it if I do decide to read it. I'd hope that the next one may explain more about the elemental magic as that is really intriguing for me and the lack of explanations for it in this book was so disappointing.
The plot of this story sounded so great, but it wasn't what I expected once I started reading. The two Queens were not great characters. I preferred Rielle and I did start to like her a little eventually but Eliana was so awful (not a character you hate but is a good written character... she just isn't a good character in any way).
I know many people loved the prologue but I really did not enjoy it as it gave away a lot of things. You read the rest of the book just waiting for them to happen and it took away some of the things that could have been a good surprise. Such as...
Spoiler
At the beginning of Rielle's story shes friends with Audric and Ludivine who are engaged to each other. But in the prologue its brought up that Queen Rielle and King Audric are husband and wife and are having a child. It's also then mentioned that Queen Rielle killed King Audric... so we know she marries him and kills him. Plot twists just aren't plot twists anymore with this and I really didn't like it. You read scenes with them knowing whats inevitably going to happen at some point.The chapters alternate between Rielle's viewpoint and Eliana's viewpoint. I don't usually mind this in books but this one was not done well. Some chapters were so short and it swapped viewpoints so often and quickly that you couldn't get into a character and the situation before you were moved to the other again.
Rielle has to endure 7 trials for the elements. All of the trials are similar in how they play out that they become boring and annoying. A couple of the trials were a mere 7 pages (in the ARC version I had). 7 pages from start to finish (build up to end). These trials could've been fantastic but they were over as quickly as they began. Another thing I found annoying was that at every trial Rielle knows she has to show her control over the elements yet she wastes time trying to just run away from the element coming at her. This made the trials even more annoying and short as once she remembered she has to show her control she just... does it and wins, the end. Every trial is the exact same in terms of what she does. She tries to run from it, uses her power, easily wins. In a very short amount of time, literally nothing else happens in them.
Eliana's character is just an awful person. She truly is once of the most unnecessarily nasty (in places) characters I have ever read. I get that she is meant to be tough and independent and fierce but at many instances throughout the book she is nasty for no reason whatsoever. This adds nothing to her character apart from me disliking her as some parts were just downright unnecessary.
One of the biggest issues I had with the book overall was the world building. There is none. I couldn't even tell you what the worlds were like I had only my own imagination to try and come up with something as there is shockingly little world building for a book with 2 separate time periods and 7 deadly trials. You have nothing to go on. The metal trial was the hardest part of the book to get through for me, I genuinely had no idea what the trial was meant to be. I had some weird image of a pit of spikes and girders that moved but that was it.
This book is like a 2nd book rather than a first book in a series. It read as if we had already had the world building and the build up to it and this book was the next book along. If this was a second book then it may not have been as bad (as long as the first was good of course). It definitely didn't seem like the first book in a trilogy. There was no explanations to how the magic works, the elements and castings. All we know is some people can perform it and Rielle can just do it all.
I may chose to read the second one, but I wont be paying full price for it if I do decide to read it. I'd hope that the next one may explain more about the elemental magic as that is really intriguing for me and the lack of explanations for it in this book was so disappointing.