A review by claudiamacpherson
Kingsbane by Claire Legrand

adventurous emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Rielle has finally been crowned Sun Queen, but now she faces the task of repairing the falling Gate. To do so, she must collect the castings of the saints, scattered around the world and protected by the Obex guard. A thousand years in the future, Eliana is grappling with her new power and what it means: that she is the Sun Queen and daughter of the Kingsbane.

As I had expected, my preference for Rielle's storyline in Furyborn was almost immediately reversed in Kingsbane. From reading others' reviews, I knew a lot of people were annoyed by Rielle...but I didn't realize how quickly I would come to agree with them. She was impulsive, violent, rude, and arrogant, and just generally an obnoxious character to follow. It was so frustrating to watch her push away all of the kindness and assistance those around her tried to give her. Eliana, on the other hand, did a 180 in the other direction and suddenly became a much more understandable character (at least for me). Though I thought the shift was a bit too abrupt to be realistic, I liked seeing her start to open up to people and allow herself to care for people besides Remy. I also enjoyed the occasional POVs of other characters interspersed throughout the book, especially Jessamyn's.
It really helped show how the tiniest changes effected by time travel could cause important differences in the distant future.
Like with the warnings about the characters, I had also heard that there was a major betrayal at the end of this book. I still was not prepared for Simon to be working for the angels. I had assumed that the betrayal would come from Rielle's storyline, either her betrayal (which was inevitable) or either Ludivine or Audric's betrayal of her, causing her to join Corien. But nope, even after all Simon's emotional scenes of love with Eliana, he still turned out to be a bad guy?? I'm hoping that we'll get some justification for his actions (or at least an explanation) in the third book, because it really does feel out of character.


Happy ending meter (no spoilers, just the general vibe of the ending):
Definitely not happy. Surprising (if you're me, but maybe you'll see the ending coming...I sure didn't). Thank god I have the next book ready to go!
Expand filter menu Content Warnings