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A review by silverfeather
Furyborn by Claire Legrand
4.0
(4.5—closer to a 5 than a 4 but i’ve been giving out so many 5 stars lately i need to even out my ratio)
no one out here writing better characters than claire legrand i said it i said it
EDIT 5/6/2020 (now that I've had some time to process this):
Wow it feels SO GOOD to dive back into a fantasy that was a joy to read from start to finish!! It took me forever to pick this up, knowing that I would love it, and was not disappointed. That’s not to say that the book doesn’t have problems, and I totally get the mixed reviews of this book, but I was willing to overlook a lot of that because so many of the tropes in here really spoke to me. Great characters and romance in a fascinating premise with a fine execution.
THINGS I LOVED:
-Rielle and Eliana, the two main characters, were SO GOOD and so easy to root for, and seeing their similarities and differences examined throughout the book was such an interesting character study. They’re very different in so many different ways, but they were two kinds of female protagonists that I really love to read about. Seeing the moral ambiguity they both struggle with was so captivating.
-VERY strong side characters—Claire LeGrand really has a gift for writing great characters! I can’t think of a single character in this book that I disliked reading about—even the villains were so fun to hate and sort of sympathetic!
-THE ROMANCE. I ship everyone with everyone and I don’t feel bad about it. Definitely way steamy for YA (still not sure if this is YA or adult but it definitely reads like both)
-Although an elemental magic system is certainly nothing new in fantasy, this system was really cool to read about, especially with each element’s association with a casting, a saint, a country, etc.
THINGS I DIDN’T:
-The biggest flaw a fantasy often suffers from is a slow start, and this book was no exception. The first 100 pages or so were a struggle to read from, as I couldn’t really see where the story was going. Even once we were on track, I wasn’t really compelled to follow along in some places until about halfway through. Thankfully compelling characters and relationship dynamics helped me bridge the gap into the exciting parts of the plot.
-That being said, the strong point of this book is the characters. If you’re looking for a fast-paced or exciting plot, this isn’t the book for you. But as someone who seeks out character-driven plots and stories, this was right up my alley.
-To piggyback on this, the book is heavily laden with plot conveniences to carry the story along. Things would happen and it felt like we weren’t supposed to question them; it was a thinly veiled passage to get us from point A to point B. (It did their job, though, because I was having too much fun to really stop and question!)
-Most ??? part of this book is the way some reveals are handled; lots of the book is “spoiled” in the prologue so as characters in a later timeline make their own revelations about what we, the audience, already know, it was hard to tell if the author wanted those reveals to emotionally land with us as well, considering that we already knew them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it was definitely weird and a new experience to me as a reader.
OVERALL I would highly recommend this book as I really enjoyed it; I went into detail about a lot of my dislikes but overall they were easy to gloss over because my enjoyment of the book and the characters really overshadowed any big problems I had. My expectations were sort of low based on the mixed reviews I’d heard, and even as I read I was expecting the story to sag under the vast scope of the plot, but I was happily proven wrong!!
no one out here writing better characters than claire legrand i said it i said it
EDIT 5/6/2020 (now that I've had some time to process this):
Wow it feels SO GOOD to dive back into a fantasy that was a joy to read from start to finish!! It took me forever to pick this up, knowing that I would love it, and was not disappointed. That’s not to say that the book doesn’t have problems, and I totally get the mixed reviews of this book, but I was willing to overlook a lot of that because so many of the tropes in here really spoke to me. Great characters and romance in a fascinating premise with a fine execution.
THINGS I LOVED:
-Rielle and Eliana, the two main characters, were SO GOOD and so easy to root for, and seeing their similarities and differences examined throughout the book was such an interesting character study. They’re very different in so many different ways, but they were two kinds of female protagonists that I really love to read about. Seeing the moral ambiguity they both struggle with was so captivating.
-VERY strong side characters—Claire LeGrand really has a gift for writing great characters! I can’t think of a single character in this book that I disliked reading about—even the villains were so fun to hate and sort of sympathetic!
-THE ROMANCE. I ship everyone with everyone and I don’t feel bad about it. Definitely way steamy for YA (still not sure if this is YA or adult but it definitely reads like both)
-Although an elemental magic system is certainly nothing new in fantasy, this system was really cool to read about, especially with each element’s association with a casting, a saint, a country, etc.
THINGS I DIDN’T:
-The biggest flaw a fantasy often suffers from is a slow start, and this book was no exception. The first 100 pages or so were a struggle to read from, as I couldn’t really see where the story was going. Even once we were on track, I wasn’t really compelled to follow along in some places until about halfway through. Thankfully compelling characters and relationship dynamics helped me bridge the gap into the exciting parts of the plot.
-That being said, the strong point of this book is the characters. If you’re looking for a fast-paced or exciting plot, this isn’t the book for you. But as someone who seeks out character-driven plots and stories, this was right up my alley.
-To piggyback on this, the book is heavily laden with plot conveniences to carry the story along. Things would happen and it felt like we weren’t supposed to question them; it was a thinly veiled passage to get us from point A to point B. (It did their job, though, because I was having too much fun to really stop and question!)
-Most ??? part of this book is the way some reveals are handled; lots of the book is “spoiled” in the prologue so as characters in a later timeline make their own revelations about what we, the audience, already know, it was hard to tell if the author wanted those reveals to emotionally land with us as well, considering that we already knew them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it was definitely weird and a new experience to me as a reader.
OVERALL I would highly recommend this book as I really enjoyed it; I went into detail about a lot of my dislikes but overall they were easy to gloss over because my enjoyment of the book and the characters really overshadowed any big problems I had. My expectations were sort of low based on the mixed reviews I’d heard, and even as I read I was expecting the story to sag under the vast scope of the plot, but I was happily proven wrong!!