October 05, 2018

DNF Review: Furyborn by Claire Legrand

Furyborn (The Empirium Trilogy #1)
Author: Claire Legrand
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication Date: May 22, 2018
Pages: 501
Format: Galley/NetGalley

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.

Review: So I DNF'ed this at about 33% or about 165ish pages in. Ok guys, I tried. I really tried with this book. I was so intrigued by the synopsis and the idea behind the story. I really really wanted to like this book. I actually did enjoy the prologue. It pulled me in and was so intriguing. However, as soon as the actually story started, I felt like I was thrown out of the book because the writing felt different. I've tried to read this 4 separate times now. And each time I put it down after a few chapters. Please keep in mind this is only my opinion and just because I didn't like it, doesn't mean its a bad book. It's just not for me. I know a number of others loved it. So I'll tell you what I struggled with. 

Following the story. I usually have no issues jumping back and forth between story lines of different characters and following everything. But there was just so much going on in so many of the chapters I read that I was getting things confused between the girls. There was also just a lot of action and not enough explaining of either world. Usually at 165 pages in a book, especially a first book, I've got an established idea how how the world looks and runs. Yet with Furyborn, I don't really have any idea of how either world, Rielle or Eliana's really runs or looks like. There's so much focus on the girls that the world-building is severely lacking. I have no idea about the inner workings of either world. Same goes with the magic. We see Rielle starting to be put through trials at the point where I DNF'ed but it still doesn't explain much of anything regarding the magic in this world at this point. So we know she has access to all the elemental magics, but we don't really learn anything about them. And again, usually at 165 pages in, magic is explained at least partially in other books. I just felt like there was too much focus on the girls and their action plots and not enough on establishing the world they are in. Moving on to the focus on the girls, I didn't really feel much of a connection to either Rielle or Eliana. They both felt a bit bland to me. I mean, if I had to pick one, I did care about Rielle a little bit compared to Eliana. But it was lacking the strong connection I usually feel to a character. 

Also, I'm confused. Rielle is referred to as the Sun Queen in some parts, but then the Blood Queen in others. Which is she? Based on the info for the second book, it seems like she's actually the Blood Queen but who knows. I wish this trilogy the best. The second book sounds like it will be better than the first, but I don't think I'll be reading it since I didn't finish book one. Like I said, I really wanted to like this book and I was really excited for it, it just didn't live up to the hype. Since I did finish a third of the book I am going to star rate it since I think 165 pages is a fair amount of time to put into a book.