A review by aylosfrijoles
Rebel by Marie Lu

2.75

It felt like eating a very dry, very tasteless piece of pie. This book takes a while to really take off - a dry top crust, if you will - and while there's a juicy middle full of tasty adventure, a sibling rivalry, and a crumbling dystopian government, we end up with a soggy bottom ending for our brothers.

A proposal from a beloved character to another (who doesn't even get a POV chapter this time around)

couldn't save a lackluster ending where

a big bad mafioso gets into a melee battle with a teenager??? Our main protagonist teaches his younger brother how to basically do parkour for like 15 minutes in the previous chapter, but suddenly he's also great at grappling and disarming grown men?? With guns!! And knives?! The final discussion between the main antagonist and our new hero, Eden, about right and wrong whilst grappling/parkour-ing was... a choice.

C'mon, I know this is YA and there's a certain level of cheese I should expect, but it's like author Marie Lu doesn't trust us to get the thesis of this godforsaken novel unless she writes it out for us 10 times. An unbelievable (negative) and sputtering final battle for a fascinating Legend series character like Eden, who deserved better.

This story was ultimately unnecessary, as we explored the VR tech in the Warcross series in a more successful and exciting way. There just wasn't much to root for. The stakes weren't high enough if we knew

Daniel and Eden were returning to the Republic anyway

.