Thursday 12 February 2015

Legend review

The Legend series seems to be quite a beloved series to many, and I was eagerly awaiting reading it for myself.
Legend has an interesting premise. Two kids from different sides of the track. Day and June are both fifteen. Day is a criminal, and June is the only person to score 1500 on her Trials.
Day is a Robin Hood kind of character. Stealing from the Republic and giving some relief to the poor in his sector, Whereas as June, is tipped for big things in the military, youngest at her university and avid follower of all rules. Their world collide when Day is accused of killing June's brother, Metias. And so June is set a mission to find the elusive Day.

I've seen on Goodreads that opinions are quite varied which surprised me, because most people I had actually spoken to about this book had nothing but high praise for it.
The idea of the Republic and Colonies warring was quite refreshing and I wish that side of things were expanded upon, we are only given the briefest glimpse and for me, it wasn't enough. I wanted to know how things had gotten to the point they had, how their systems and governments had come into being.

My biggest problem with this book was the main characters themselves. Each are only 15 years old and yet they are capable of doing things like scaling buildings in seconds. Day breaks into banks with trained military guards. Manages to overwhelm his guards and almost escapes his cell. And June, well she practically leads her own platoon/unit. She ranks higher than some people double her age, and I find it all very had to believe.
Perhaps if they were both seventeen, maybe even sixteen would have been better. But I can't help thinking of them as just children. And so it makes the whole thing seem rather unbelievable for me.

I will say that the story did keep me entertained and was certainly engaging. I was very curious to how things were going to plan out. Especially when June discovers she isn't the only one with a perfect 1500 score. Though the whole, 'government is actually evil, so we both most miraculously escape' thing is getting terribly boring. I'm hoping the next instalments offer something a little more complex.
Legend is quite a short read, and I think Marie Lu has done well to fit all she has into the book. But I feel like the book should have been about a hundred pages longer so that she could have fleshed out characters better, or giving us better insights to governments and world building.

The writing is quite solid and nothing that I could particularly find fault with. Although sometimes Day and June did feel like almost the same character. They have a lot of the same skills and so it wasn't completely as diverse as I would have liked it to be. Like I said, it could have been longer to try avoid the two characters coming off seemingly the same.

I wasn't blown away by Legend, and neither was I totally bored by it. I know a lot of people keep the series in high regard, and I'm definitely willing to hold off writing the series off until I've finished the other two books. Even if I end up not liking the seconds book Prodigy, I'll still most likely finish it's third book Champion, as I don't like leaving series uncompleted.
So sadly, Legend only gets 3 stars from me.

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