Official Synopsis:
The stunningly original, must-read fantasy of 2018 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, Rielle Dardenne risks everything to save him, exposing herself as one of a pair of prophesied queens: a queen of light, and a queen of blood. To prove she is the Sun Queen, Rielle must endure seven elemental magic trials. If she fails, she will be executed…unless the trials kill her first.
One thousand years later, the legend of Queen Rielle is a fairy tale to Eliana Ferracora. A bounty hunter for the Undying Empire, Eliana believes herself untouchable–until her mother vanishes. To find her, Eliana joins a rebel captain and discovers that the evil at the empire’s heart 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.
My Review:
I reread this book for the Sourcebooks Fire read-a-long and I love it just as much as I did before. The worldbuilding is so rich and innovative, not a single crack in the building all of the individual facts create. While some questions are still posed, Claire Legrand has a clear grip on the reality of the world she created. The characters are multi-faceted and examined and tested from angle throughout the two books published so far in the Empirium trilogy.
I also loved being a part of the book club in general. There were a lot of great points brought up and a lot of things I hadn’t realized or paid attention to. I love the book with all of its rich layers just as much as before if not more after getting an even deeper look into the book than when I first read it over a year and a half ago.
I would recommend this book to people who like epic fantasy, LGBTQ+ characters, questionable morals, and a lot of powerful magic. It definitely has the same dark magic feeling as The Hazel Wood in my opinion. It also has incredible, unapologetic female characters and powerful friendships and complex romantic relationships. Everything in this series radiates strength.
I would rate this book…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
The Fiction Feature 