Furyborn

 Author: Claire Legrand

 Release Date: May 22, 2018

 Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Format: ARC

Source: Raincoast Books

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 Summary:

Follows two fiercely independent young women, centuries apart, who hold the power to save their world…or doom it.

When assassins ambush her best friend, the crown prince, Rielle Dardenne risks everything to save him, exposing her ability to perform all seven kinds of elemental magic. The only people who should possess this extraordinary power are a pair of prophesied queens: a queen of light and salvation and a queen of blood and destruction. To prove she is the Sun Queen, Rielle must endure seven trials to test her magic. If she fails, she will be executed…unless the trials kill her first.

A thousand years later, the legend of Queen Rielle is a mere fairy tale to bounty hunter Eliana Ferracora. When the Undying Empire conquered her kingdom, she embraced violence to keep her family alive. Now, she believes herself untouchable–until her mother vanishes without a trace, along with countless other women in their city. To find her, Eliana joins a rebel captain on a dangerous mission and discovers that the evil at the heart of the empire is more terrible than she ever imagined.

As Rielle and Eliana fight in a cosmic war that spans millennia, their stories intersect, and the shocking connections between them ultimately determine the fate of their world–and of each other. (Goodreads)

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Review:

*I received an advance copy of this book from Raincoast Books for this blog tour in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion.*

Raise your hand if hyped books scare you. *Raises hand* Okay, now raise your hand if you loooove it when they live up to the hype. *Raises hand agian*

If you raised your paws with me for both of those statements then let me tell you…hop on that Furyborn hype train. It lived up to my expectations and then some. I went in having not re-read the synopsis and I’m so happy I did because it was a wonderful, sometimes overwhelming whirlwind of excitement, magic, and the unexpected.

The two female leads are awesome. Badass, flawed, poweful, ambitious, sassy…I connected with both immediately. The secondary characters were also wonderful and I felt a strong, cohesive bond to pretty much everyone in the story. Yes, even the characters I hated…it was just a bond of rage in their case! I also adored how Claire tied together all their threads as the book went on and left you clues to start piecing history together.

The magic system felt both familiar and new and exciting for me. Furyborn puts it’s own spin on elemental magic, how it works, and how those who weild it are able to do so. Elemental magic is something I will never get tired of so I am fully here for the powers in this novel!

At first the alternating POV and timelines threw me off but after a few chapters I got into the groove of things and really loved the setup. Each chapter marches you a few steps closer to having the whole picture of how each storyline connects to the other. This was a really neat way to get the clues for the big reveal and finally see how things come together. It was also never boring so things absolutely flew by. Great pacing and great storytelling helped this live up to the hype for me 100%

Furyborn is easily going to be one of my favourite books of the year. It’s fast-paced, exciting, packed with magic, and has a bunch of bad-ass female characters that I’d love to have on my side any day of the week.

AUTHOR Q&A

Q: What does your writing process look like? (I.e. planning out general plot points, brainstorming boards a la Susan Dennard, “pantsing” it, etc.)

Claire Legrand: In the beginning, I spend a lot of time thinking: daydreaming and listening to music, thinking in silence, scribbling down jumbled ideas and thoughts. Ideas need a lot of time to cook, and I don’t like to rush that process. Once I’m ready, I decide on the major plot points—the inciting incident, the midpoint, the “black moment,” etc. These plot points serve as tentpoles around which I base the rest of the story. Once I can see the general structure of the story, I start outlining in more detail. What happens in each chapter? How does each chapter, and each scene, progress the plot and build the character’s arc? After the outline is ready, I start drafting. Of course, outlines aren’t sacred or stagnant. They often change as I draft. Not even the most thorough outline can account for the surprises your characters will bring as you really get to know them.