Legend
By: Marie Lu
Summary
Both character paths eventually cross when Junes brother Metias is unexpectedly murdered, and like always, Day becomes the prime suspect. Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family's survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias's death. But after many shocking events, the two find out the truth that really brought them together, and everything changes.
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Book Reviews
What “Legend” delivers is a walloping good ride with an emphasis on believability. This is no easy feat given that its setting, Los Angeles, has been reduced, postapocalyptic style (by an environmental disaster? We’re not told), to the Land-O-Lakes and those living with the resultant plague find their homes marked with a large red X by the military. (Marking doors has historical precedence that is not easily translated into entertainment, but don’t tell Lu.) That I gasped aloud at one daring plot device showed me the strength of Lu’s conviction: she will follow where the story leads her, even at the risk of alienating some readers. This alone deserves applause. -Ridley Pears New York Times
The much-hyped debut novel from Marie Lu, Legend is an adrenaline-fueled, action-packed, fun novel. I devoured the book in a single sitting and thoroughly enjoyed myself – much in the way that I enjoy and devour films like Con Air. There’s nothing really new here: at center stage, we’ve got the brilliant super genius protagonists, who of course are super hot, who of course fall for each other despite their fifteeen-years of accumulated baggage. Told in alternating point-of-view chapters (with some questionable design elements incorporated into at least the ARC version of the text), the novel chronicles the great evilness of the Republic and all that our brilliant protagonists will do to fight against The Man. The plot twists are all fairly transparent from the onset (the origins of the Plague, the ignorance of June and other upper classes, the truth behind June’s brother’s death, for example), and the worldbuilding is eminently familiar. There are echoes of Lois Lowry’s dystopian society of The Giver, of Scott Westerfeld’s bubblegum action in the Uglies quartet, and of the action and basic characterization profile of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. Our protagonists may be caricatures, defined by their safely bland appeal, and appear to have unshakably noble values at heart, juxtaposed against the villains of the piece, who are the properly villainous, emotionally distanced monsters. -The Book Smugglers