Name: What Fury Brings
Series: Stand Alone
Author: Tricia Levenseller
Publisher: Feiwel
Format: Hardback (Owlcrate SE)
Genres: Adult, Romantasy
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Explicit Open Door
Rating:
Synopsis: Goodreads
There’s a shortage of men in the kingdom of Amarra. After a failed rebellion against the matriarchy, most noblemen in the country are dead. Now the women of Amarra must obtain their husbands (should they want one) by kidnapping them from other kingdoms.
Olerra, a warrior princess vying for the throne, is determined to prove her worth by kidnapping a husband. And not just any husband. To outmaneuver her treacherous cousin, she needs the best. Fortunately, the second-born prince of their greatest enemy is widely known for both his looks and his sweet, docile temperament. He’s the perfect choice to secure her claim to the throne.
Sanos, heir to the Kingdom of Brutus, has nothing but contempt for the idea of a society run by women. Trained from birth to fight, lead, and follow in his father’s overbearing footsteps, his path has always been set. Until he takes his younger brother’s place in a drunken prank and finds himself kidnapped, carted off to the Amarran Palace, and informed that he is to become the husband of Queen Potential Olerra. Sanos needs to escape before anyone learns his real identity, but the more he gets to know his captor, the less sure he is of what he truly wants.
Review:
I am not sure I even know where to begin with this one! I simulatenously enjoyed What Fury Brings and had issues with it. And it’s the issues I had with it that mean I’m struggled initially to know how to rate it. Ultimately I decided on 3.5 because in my reading journal I wrote a 3 star rating means I enjoyed it but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone and 4 stars is it was almost perfect… Well, it wasn’t quite almost perfect, but I don’t think it would have taken much for me to have enjoyed this more than I did. So 3.5 stars feels like a good middle ground between these ratings.
I loved the relationship between our FMC Olerra and her friend Ydra! And simulatenously I loved the relationship our MMC Sanos had with his brothers. I wanted more page time with the brothers and Ydra with Sanos and Olerra because I really did love them. If Tricia ever wants to write spin offs with the brothers I’m 100% there for that. But we did get a sense of a long standing existing relationships between these people, and you could truly see that they cared for each other.
Now I didn’t go into this knowing it was a stand alone, and so I did struggle with the pacing of the romance between Sanos and Olerra. These two come from very different places. Olerra lives in Amarra (ruled by a matriarchy that is cruel to their men) and then Sanos from Brutus (ruled by a Patriarchy who is cruel to their women). So, naturally when Sanos meets Olerra you expect there to be a big ol clash of morals and thoughts and wants! And we did get that – and whilst I liked it, it did make it very difficult to like them together… Then when the romance starts taking off it felt rushed. Honestly, in a relatively short stand alone, I can understand that it is pretty hard to get this pacing right. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was right in What Fury Brings.
The conflict behind the story in this book was excellent and I actually wanted more of the politics of that situation (both with the impending war between Brutus and Amarra as well as the civil war between two Queen Potentials)! I can’t think of many times where I’m like ‘yeah I wanted more court politics’! So, there was definitely potential here. What we did get I very much enjoyed. Again I felt like it was rushed and answers were all too conviently found, but again it is a relatively short stand alone.
I definitely think it is a good read – but go into it knowing that it is a stand alone and perhaps that will help you forgive some of the pacing issues. I do think some of the punishments and on page activities would cause some people to struggle with this one, which is why I can’t recommend it to everyone. It’s definitely an adult romantasy and it doesn’t shy away from sex and sexual activities. But there are some scenes that I just didn’t enjoy reading and can’t say I really understood the reasoning behind…
A 3.5 star rating feels right for What Fury Brings. Our main characters were good, but all the growth we did get felt rushed and the romance was lacking – until it wasn’t, again a reflection of the pacing just not being quite right in this one.
A brief spoiler about a possible trigger warning.
I really struggle with humiliation being used as a punishment or as training of any kind. And there was quite a bit of that in What Fury Brings. I just wanted to include that in my review so that you are aware of it as well. Unfortunately this isn’t the only TW in this book, but a lot of them are mentioned at the start of the book, I just don’t recall whether or not this one was mentioned.
“Men were unfit to rule.”
Reading With Tyler 
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