I am so excited for Furyborn! I was ever since I read the plot on Goodreads. Two queens in prophecy, but a 1000 years apart? I’m calling that a unique idea in YA fantasy. The book also looks pretty amazing, and after reading it I am still just as enthusiastic about Claire Legrand’s Furyborn. I wonder what’s going to happen in the next books, and even though we got some answers now, there is still…
Are there certain genres you tend to steer clear of?
Other than contemporary, I usually avoid horror. I’ve only read one that I really enjoyed and it still creeped me out (AND THE TREES CREPT IN by Dawn Kurtagich, for anyone curious). But I’ve seen a lot of people post about SAWKILL GIRLS and something about it intrigued me. It sounds like there’s a fantasy element which I can definitely get behind!
So I’ll be giving this a try in the future, probably not until the new year.
If you’ve read it already, I’d love to hear what you thought!
my long white dress with tiny blue flowers, my brown wool cloak, my boots
thin, dark-haired
Into the tender skin above my breasts he carves the mark of Saint Amity. Two hooked lines, joined by a small triangle. The letter m
My plain work dress has disappeared, and now I wear a gown as white as the long winter, softer than anything I have touched in my life. The ribboned bodice hugs my torso, and the long lace skirts circle around me like clouds.
He holds my hood in his hands. Cloth dyed red, ties hanging limp from his fingers like a skinned creature.
ribboned yellow dress embroidered with blue flowers
BlessingHunger
honey coloured hair
Hunger in her deep blue gown
Father
Long legs and long arms and a broad bright smile, sharp dark features like my own.
Patience Barrow
She wears a pale yellow dress with a white collar, her skirts spilled around her legs. She twists a lock of my brown hair around her fingers. I watch her face, trace its soft lines. She showed us how to weave crowns of flowers, and now one sits crooked on her head, blue and white and pink all mashed against our blanket.
beneath the tallest one stands a woman in a fine gray gown, a cloak of wolf skin slung around her thin shoulders. She is pale, as I am, with my sister’s blue eyes and golden hair. Avazel has given me the gift of turning her ghostly face whole, her arms smooth and fair.
Samuel
A smile on his tanned face, even after all he has lost. His winter pallor has already faded. He works hard in the fields. He hunts and runs. The wind tousles his thick dark hair.
his chin is narrow and sharp
Temperance
On Temperance’s right shoulder perches a fright-bird, a Devil’s creature, all the feathers gone from its head. In their place, a single white eye and gleaming scales. Beneath her dark hood,
So different she looks, wearing a gown blue as jay feathers. The sleeves are long and loose and slip from her bare white shoulders. Her dark hair is soft with a silver sheen
MercyVengeance
long red hair to her waist, sharp nose, sharp eyes, freckled skin. Beneath their cloaks, they wear the long white dresses saints wear on holy days, with high lace collars and ribbons at their wrists
her dress as deep a green as summer leaves dipped in shadow. She watches me with sharp eyes. Tiny braids hide in the red cascade of her hair,
green dress
SilenceSorrow
Her hair shines white in the faint moonlight.
The scarred mark of Saint Silence pokes up from her collar—four little marks, like stitches, crossing a proud straight line
long fair hair and red hood
one year older than rage
has woven a few thin braids into her hair. Sorrow wraps one of them around her finger until the end softens and curls
Sorrow solemn and pale as snow, wearing a long black dress with loose flowing sleeves.
Malice
She wears a fine low-collared gown the color of blood. Roses bloom on her cheeks, and though the set of her mouth is hard, her eyes shine bright as a spring sky. She could be as young as I or as old as Granny Dale, whose house crawls with grandchildren. Her hair is black as the mud that gathers beneath my fingernails when I work in the garden, her skin pale as the white moon I know.
her blue eyes ablaze beneath her messy cap of short black hair (it is cut short in the book)
Furor
She points to another woman farther back in the trees. Furor is fair and slight with copper hair to her waist. Flowering vines adorn her sky-blue gown. She molds from the dirt a black wolf pup with shining white eyes and a bright pink tongue.
Furor, vines of red flowers trailing from her hair, holds two crooked knives as long as her forearms
Cunning
a woman with deep brown skin and shorn black hair stands beside another white tree not far from us, her eyes closed and a strange song moving across her lips. Some words I know—berry, sky, flesh—but others I do not. She spreads her arms wide and rises slowly off the dark moss-covered ground, her bare feet pointed and her gown of sunset colors—orange and red and violet—floating in the air around her. In her right hand, she holds a white branch sanded smooth. When she opens her eyes, they are full white too, like my fright-birds’
her body draped in a gown of sunset colors, orange and red and violet.
Ire
a woman, white of skin and hair and eyes, wearing green trousers and a long white tunic hemmed in gold. She stands on a felled tree. Her words are part song and part prayer.
As she sing-speaks, bits of darkness peel away from the black sky and flutter down, forming themselves, until they alight upon her head and arms. Soon Ire wears a cloak of crows, their dark feathers all agleam.
green trousers and a gold-hemmed tunic, a great white-eyed crow on her shoulder
Gall
a pale woman with a light dusting of short black hair, shorter than a man’s. Her gown is sage green and leaves her shoulders bare
Storm
Her ruddy skin is striped with scars. One of her arms, I am shocked to see, is made of metal. Metal joints, metal fingers, as if a blacksmith has forged it for her. It moves as smoothly as my own and is polished to a gleam. I look at the fierce blue light in the woman’s eyes, her wild nest of gray hair.
wrinkled face
Liberty
brown skin and shining black hair tied back with a meadow-green ribbon. Around her are roots and mushrooms, long jagged leaves that glisten with oil. She crushes, tears, mixes, then raises her arm without looking up and murmurs one of those strange chants—part song, part plain speaking.
Jamie
A girl enters the room, closes the door quickly behind her, then turns to look at me. She has smooth skin, a dark brown like Cunning’s, and long black hair kept in many neat braids.
Jamie’s mother
her skin is just the same brown. The same dark eyes, the same black braids. She wears a long pale shirt to her knees, gray trousers, dark boots.
dress is a million shades of blue—royal and peacock, periwinkle and cerulean. Sleeveless with a high collar. Form-fitting bodice, skirts falling around my legs like waterfalls. It’s exactly the kind of dress I’m always drawn to when I browse the archives for old fashion editorials.
gray women etc
Above me towers a woman, silent and gray, thin and bent, five heads taller than any man I have seen. Her long arms trail to the ground, as if they have sprouted from it. The rest of her drifts formless in the air, disappearing into the night. Wild dark hair to her waist, wide toothless mouth hanging open, and though she has no eyes—that gaping mouth is the only thing I can see on what might be her face—I know she is watching me, waiting for me to speak.
Her mouth opens wider, a vast hole, and out of it drift a few buzzing black flies. Deep inside her throat shines a curve of silver, and though I know it is foolish, I cannot help but lean closer. What is that thing?
I hold still and look upon her face, once smooth and now cracking, now peeling away in thin shreds, her mouth widening, her skin stretching around it, and I will remember this, I will always remember this, I will hold it in my heart and mind forever. Then, suddenly, my mother cries out and staggers back from me. She groans, a wordless throaty cry, and looks away, hiding her face. Flesh falls from her body like shredded leaves. Flies buzz out from between her fingers. I know I should not, but I hurry toward her all the same, crying
