I really thought I would be taking a break from young-adult Dystopian trilogies. They seem to be all over the place these days, and after my disappointment in the last two books of the Divergent trilogy, I wasn’t craving any more. But then my book club decided we’d read the Legend (2011) trilogy by Marie Lu for March. I wasn’t too excited initially, but dutifully picked up the audio cd from the library (shorter waitlist). Not surprisingly, it didn’t take me long to get into it, and soon I was sitting in my garage, waiting to hear about the life and death adventures of June and Day.
The dystopian world in this novel feels almost immediately familiar, although I assume we will discover more of the particulars of this world in the next two books. June and Day are almost Romeo and Juliet-like characters, teenagers living within the Republic. June is part of the wealthy elite, she is a prodigy, the only person to earn a perfect score on her “Trial” exams, forced on everyone at the age of eleven. Day, on the other hand, is a street rat. Grown up wanting in the poor sector of town, Day failed his Trial but escaped the consequences and has been running amok and causing havoc for the federation ever since. It is when June and Day find themselves together and June starts learning the truth about the Federation that everything changes.
This was an entertaining read. The characters feel almost like super heroes. Both are incredibly smart, agile, and accomplished. I got the feeling that they were capable of almost anything. Their only weaknesses seemed to be their love for their families. This makes for an exciting read, but they’re a little less relatable than less impressive characters.
I’d like to keep this review pretty short. I’m reserving [most of my] judgment until I finish the whole trilogy. I did enjoy this one and I’m hopeful for the next two books in the series, but I swear, this is the end of the young-adult dystopians…as soon as I read Ender’s Game and The Maze Runner.
I actually liked this series better than Hunger Games and Divergent (even though I really liked both those as well). I thought Lu did a better job than Collins or Roth of explaining how the world got into the mess it’s in. Hope you enjoyed the others in the series.