Furysong (The Aurelian Cycle, #3)

What I Liked: Rosaria Munda delivers an intensely engaging third and final book to the Fireborne trilogy. This world is so richly detailed and the characters well developed that it is hard not to be sucked into this fantasy world and worry about these characters’ plight as you would dear friends. I thought (erroneously) that if I listened to the audiobook while carrying out other tasks my heart wouldn’t hurt so much for these characters’ trials and tribulations. However, the voice cast does an amazing job bringing this story to life and probably made me even more emotionally invested.
The bond between dragon and rider is richly established and helped me to remember that it is indeed a fictional world and the characters have a decent chance of surviving. My heart ached so intensely for the strife separating Annie and Lee as well as Griff and Delos. Over the course of the series, they have all become dear characters with solid backgrounds. With each book, we have added the perspective of a character and it was nice that this one added Delos’ perspective.
The political situation in Callipolis and New Pythos was thought-provoking. There were good and bad points about the revolutionary government. It is up to our characters to uphold the good and fix the bad after the glaring differences in the counter-coup. Griff’s change in status and in attitude to Delos was very surprising although grief can change a person. I did want to shake him a few times though.
What Left Me Wanting More: Annie and Lee’s tricky plan to resolve things left me scratching my head a bit. I am not sure that I agree that was the best way to resolve the dilemma they faced. It did guarantee to be quite a tearjerker because it led to several poignant deaths that I didn’t expect. There was a surprise reveal of the life of a character that I also questioned. If his dragon plummeted to his death upon feeling his riders fall then how is he alive from a height so grave and now important to this plot’s resolution? That was a plot point that didn’t feel as smooth in an otherwise tightly woven narrative.
Final Verdict: The cover instantly drew me to this series. Dragons are always a bonus when done well. It is a rare thing that speaks volumes about how much I liked this series I went from the library copy to the bookstore to buy the first two books to go with the review copy of the third book that YAbookscentral received. I highly recommend this book to all who love deeply emotional books that feature dragons, fantasy, and political drama with an undercurrent of profound love and friendship.

FURYSONG is a riveting and emotional conclusion to the Aurelian Cycle trilogy. The book spares no time to launch right into the story with wars being fought in both North Pythos and Callipolis coming to a head. The book follows the characters we have grown to love in early books as they face the ever-changing and dark future.

Griff has paved the way for a revolution in New Pythos, and he has learned of the devastation it brings. He feels adrift, but everyone is looking to him for leadership. Delo is also facing the fallout and wants to end up on the right side of history, though that carries its own dangers.

Meanwhile, Annie is not yet fully finishing in New Pythos when she realizes that a counterrevolution has devastated Callipolis. While she heads back, she must keep her wits about her if she has any hope of helping her fellow Guardians and country. Lee has been captured and turned into a tool of Ixion's plots, while he considers how he will respond and the paths that he will choose.

What I loved: This is a dark and fast-paced sequel with the paths to the future bathed in blood. The story does not shy away from the brutality of such takeovers and the ways that they must fight to retain power. Both New Pythos and Callipolis have been overthrown by individuals with very different agendas, and while neither is a utopia, there is certainly a difference in motivation and future outlook which is juxtaposed throughout.

There are some intriguing themes around choices, politics and political theories, power and how it is defined, marriage and future prospects for women, betrayal, family and bloodline legacies, how you define home, socioeconomic disparity, and the power of public perception. The countries had been founded on defined bloodlines, and the large country across the sea has similar patriarchal policies and successions. Throughout these stories, the themes of these familial ruling legacies are compared to those of the lower socioeconomic classes are important to understanding the way that certain people have risen and the obstacles those from lower classes have faced with prejudices confounding generational wealth with natural ability. In Callipolis, they had tried to divide people in other ways, but this also presented problems as tests cannot be fair to people who do not test well. Here, Ixion has found a way to continue to separate the socioeconomic classes by making certain futures as those that must be paid into to achieve, an indirect way of promoting the segregation of classes and benefiting those from the higher tiers. The series raises a lot of interesting points around the way policies can benefit higher socioeconomic classes and how this can be assumed to be conflated with some kind of value - for instance, there is an assumption that the dragonborn are somehow innately better at dragon-riding than those who were not, but these differences in the story can be explained by training, better equipment, and difference in food access. This becomes even more marked with the way that Ixion is doling out punishments.

Annie and Lee as well as Griff and Delo are dealing with their feelings for each other amidst the political confusion and considerations for their futures. Both of the romances were so easy to believe in and just really fantastic, particularly as they each continue to develop. At the same time, they are each caught up amidst the politics and knowing that their choices in both love and life will have rippling effects. When are your wishes enough to overpower the impact you could have on the future? When does your love mean enough to conquer the desire to make the world better? Can they have a happy ending as well as their desires for the futures of their countries? The answer is murky and juxtaposes a conflict between selfishness and selflessness when in positions of power. This conflict plays out in other ways as the characters and those around them must make decisions that endanger their own fates but may lead to a desirable outcome.

This was a really emotional and consuming read. Munda really pulls the reader into the story and produces all the feels. There were scenes that made me cry and others that made my heart skip a beat. There is a lot that happens in this story and so much of it is brought to life for the reader.

These are all really compelling characters, and the inclusion of the four perspectives manages to bring the reader into these emotional and riveting stories. Despite having so many characters, it remains easy to follow and keep separate. The world-building is also fantastic, expanding from the previous, particularly with more details on some of the mythology of this world and Freya's country. Readers will definitely need to have read the first couple books prior to this one. Additionally, it does not include much recap, so it would be helpful to read a synopsis of earlier books or to have read them recently.

Final verdict: An emotional and riveting conclusion, FURYSONG is a consuming YA fantasy with thought-provoking themes and unforgettable characters. Highly recommend picking up this stunning trilogy!