A review by joinedfrays
Legend by Marie Lu

adventurous tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

1.5

Legend. Where do I start with this book? There were so many things to dislike about this book, from the unlikable, unrealistic characters, to the dry writing, to the government, to the one scene where
a man in his twenties tries to kiss a fifteen year old??
. Anyways, the book was terrible, and throughout my reading experience, I wondered why it was so popular.

The story follows June, a young prodigy who’s the only person to have gotten a perfect score on the United States’… sorry, Republic’s aptitude test… sorry, Trial, which is meant to find the best children to join the war effort against the rest of the United States, the Patriots. She lives with her twenty-something year old brother Metias because their parents were killed, and goes to a top university where she trains to be in the military. Her commander tends to be a bit… trigger-happy, and so does her friend Thomas, but they justify it enough to the point where she’s convinced what they’re doing is correct. There’s also no reason for this war that is provided. Also they kill the kids that fail the Trial, but their parents are told they work at labor camps.

And then we have Day, the Republic’s most wanted criminal despite the fact that most of his offenses would only be enough to classify him as a large nuisance. He’s never killed anyone, but now he’s being accused of killing Metias. The only thoughts he is capable of having are about how attractive all of the girls he meets are. He’s on the run because he’s never been caught by the Republic, but he rescues June while her commander sends her to catch him undercover. And then June finds out who he is because she conveniently goes down tangents of extremely unrealistic thoughts that advance the plot!
And guess what. He also got a perfect score! But he’s from the slums so they tried to kill him off!


So Day nearly gets executed. But since June likes him and kissed him before she knew who he was, she’s sympathetic. She goes down another convenient tangent and finds out that
Thomas killed Metias and her commander is trying to hide it
. But also she hikes who knows how far (there’s no map, but the author constantly mentions sectors, which was really confusing) to find some known Patriots to try to set off a plan. So Thomas shoots everyone and June and Day nearly die, Day conveniently has a brother that looks identical to him and has a June-esque unrealistic tangent and figures out what happened, and his brother gets killed instead and now June and Day have to hide from the evil government, which has no reason to be evil as far as I know.

The writing was incredibly dry and it was really hard to get through at times. I had to finish it because I had to read it for a school assignment, but if I could, I would have put this book down for good. Maybe the author’s other books are better, but I could not get through this one.
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