What I will say is that I was waiting to see what Audric’s power was like and I was not disappointed. I won’t lie, there’s quite a lot to keep up with in the final instalment. Simon’s perspective was genuinely the most surprising, while Audric and Ludivine were so heartbreaking to read. Rielle’s descent into madness has officially started, while Eliana is struggling to get out of the pit she’s in. I really loved Rielle and Eliana’s character progression. All the forces that are in play are all interacting, changing, and fighting to have control. It also happened to have the most shifts between points of views withing the trilogy, and it worked so well. I was NOT PREPARED for what happened in Lightbringer. At the end of Kingsbane, I wondered how much more suffering Eliana and Rielle could go through. Reading that summary genuinely gave me chills. Abandoned and betrayed, she struggles to keep her power at bay and away from Corien, who will do everything in his power to travel back to the past to get Rielle back…even if it destroys her daughter. In the future, Eliana has arrived in the Empire a husk of the person she was. The longer she’s separated, the more she embraces the role of the Blood Queen and takes her place at Corien’s side in order to become the monster everyone believes her to be.

However, the empirium voices are beginning to drive her mad, and pressuring her to open the gate. I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers, but some of them can’t be avoided since they’re relevant to the summary.Īt the end of Kingsbane, Rielle turned her back on everything she held dear and turned toward Corien and his whispers of glory. If you haven’t yet read Furyborn or Kingsbane, you’ll definitely want to read those before picking up Lightbringer. There are several trigger warnings here, and the most prominent ones to be aware of if you’d like to read are: violence, murder, torture, coercion, and attempted suicide.īefore we begin this review, this is the final instalment of a trilogy. After the way Kingsbane ended, I wondered what would happen to both Rielle and Eliana, and the resolution of this story is unlike anything I had imagined, and I promise you that you won’t soon forget this story. The worldbuilding in this trilogy is stunning, and the character development too.

The Empirium trilogy has been such a marvellous work of fiction and I’ve followed the story of Rielle and Eliana from the moment I laid eyes on Furyborn. My goodness, the devastation that this book will wreak upon readers is intense.

Lightbringer claire legrand