A review by lesliehirgelt
The Legacy Chronicles: Trial by Fire by Pittacus Lore

1.0

These novellas were pretty terrible, in my opinion. I've read the entire original "Lorien Legacies" series, plus all of the novellas that are intertwined with that series. I get that this "Legacies Reborn" spin-off series and its novellas mostly follow new characters and have very few of the characters from the original series involved, but honestly, it was like a completely different author wrote these novellas. While the novellas in the original series provided well-written backstories of characters and helped connect timelines and events from different characters' perspectives, these novellas for this new series just randomly brought back two original characters, added a bunch of completely new characters, and had them go off on their own adventure that had absolutely nothing to do with the events of Generation One (first book in the "Legacies Reborn" spin-off series). There was almost no tie-in whatsoever, no connecting to events or anything like the purpose of the novellas in the original series. Plus, the original characters (Sam, Six, and Nine) were really terribly written -- after spending 7+ books in the original series developing those characters, the way they were written in this book was like the author had no idea who the characters were and what their personalities were actually supposed to be. Nine in particular was extremely disappointingly written. Another frustrating thing that happened repeatedly is that the characters rarely used their telekinesis defensively, even though it's well developed in the original series that the Garde use it this way all the time and were even actively trained to do so by their Cepans. To have even Sam, Six, and Nine rarely use their telekinesis in this way was frustrating, because a lot of plot events could have played out differently if they had (and a certain character wouldn't have needed to die if someone had used their telekinesis!). I plan to read the next book in the main "Legacies Reborn" series (Fugitive Six, sequel to Generation One), but I'll have to think long and hard about whether I want to read any of the upcoming novellas for this spin-off series, after how disappointing these three were. Honestly, it normally takes a lot for me to dislike a book; I'm an avid reader and almost always enjoy books, especially in genres I know I like. I hope that the rest of the series recovers!