Furyborn (Empirium Series, book 1) 

By Claire Legrand

Blurb: 
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: 
The book starts with the scene of Rielle giving birth to a little girl while Simon is in the room trying to ingore the sound of child birth. Once Rielle has gave birth she sense that Corien is on his way to come and get her baby since he is the father so she gives the girl to Simon to take care off with a necklace so they get a safe entrance to the place they are going.

It then jumps back many years to when Rielle was a girl and discovers who she really is. She goes through all these different trials to prove who she is, she also comes across many challenges and secret loves that she can't tell anyone about. While reading Rielle's point of view you discover how she met Corien and their relationship with one another.

Eliana's point of view starts when she is a teenager and is fighting rebels to stay alive and help keep food on her families table. Her best friend helps her with some of these tasks she is given, until she finds herself in a situation where he isn't around and the wolf finds her.

This isn't the first time I've read this book, as I got an advanced copy in November's FairyLoot in 2017. I'm pleased to see my opinion on this book hasn't changed and that the main story line has also not changed. I'm not entirely sure whether the ending has changed compared to the advanced reading copy and I can't look at the end of the book because it's sadly packed away in a box ready for moving house.

The description of each character is excellent. The amount of detail that has gone into the chapters to make you feel a connection to them is great, it was nice to also to see a connection between the two storylines eventhough they are set so far apart from one another. 

The adventures within the book are great, there is so much detail put into them that you actually have an image in your mind of what the places look like. This is possibly one of the very few books that I've managed to picture scenes in, so in my opinion that was a great positive to get out of the book.

Now to get onto the sexual scenes! There wasn't too many throughout the whole book but there was a few. The sexual scenes were a bit drastic at times when Audric was kissing and touching Rielle the walls rumbled as she had an orgasm. I thought this was quite strange but I managed to put it by and carry on reading. The love triangles were quite good too for both main characters as they were realistic and actually believable unlike some that you read.

The storyline overall wasn't that good but I suppose it is the first book and allows you to have a better understanding of each character for the next book. A lot of things happened but it was the same storyline for both characters all the way through the book. At times it was quite difficult to remember which characters point of view you were actually reading until names popped up, because the styles are so similar to each other. I also found that the scenery between the characters point of views didn't change much even-though they are set in different eras.

Overall the book was great, I loved the adventures, the amount of detail, the characters and the style of writing. I can't wait to read the second book when it eventually comes out. I'd definitely recommend this book to people who love adventures, twists, love triangles and angels.

Favourite Characters: Simon

Read: 16/08/18 - 24/08/18

5 stars out of 5

written by Sammie

Check out Sammie's review of book 2: Kingsbane