Series: Legend #1
Published: November 2011
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Format: Kindle eBook
Pages: 320
Rating: ★★★★★
What was once the Western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbours. Born into an elite family in one of the Republic’s wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic’s highest military circles. Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country’s most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem. From very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths—until the day June’s brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect. Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family’s survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias’s death. But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets.
The story was told in alternating chapters in the view of Day and June respectively and this made the book very balanced. June was of a more privileged background to Day, and seeing the story from two different perspectives made it quite an unbiassed read as you weren’t just seeing it from the poorer perspective as is usually the case. Admittedly the book did tend to favour the poorer communities in a rich vs poor stereotypical battle a little bit more, but you do tend to get a lot of that in young adult books – this levelled out at the end when a lot of things got revealed, but for the most part it was pretty equal.
Legend was a very fast paced book and everything seemed to happen in such a short amount of time, this suited the story very well as it is technically a tale of cat and mouse. You never spent too much time on one thing, and different things happened and were revealed at exactly the right times. The revelations in this book were brilliant, and I can honestly say that I was not expecting any single one of them – I’m usually reading a book like this and predicting everything that you would expect to happen, but in this book I was so shocked at the truths and the twists that the story had to give. Maybe it was predictable, maybe I was reading it feeling as though I was there in the characters shoes and totally missed the obvious, but that in itself is amazing, as to be so absorbed in the characters means that something is obviously going right.
I fell in love with each and every character individually – even the “bad” ones – they were very relatable and felt so real. I felt as though I was there with them going along with every hardship and good time that they went through and when I connect with characters in that way I know I’m onto a good book as characters are everything to me.
June in particular was wonderful to read about, she was so meticulous in her thoughts and calculations that it was just great to read. This was technically a “murder mystery” of sorts, and having a character that thinks about evidence in the way that June did I find to be most interesting – in these types of books I like to wonder, I like to think about what might have happened and what everything adds up to, and with June’s thorough thought processes I thought this was highlighted brilliantly.
I picked this book up due to the high praise it was being given at the time due to the imminent release of the sequel “Prodigy” (which is now out), and I thought this book would perhaps be a little too overrated and wouldn’t exceed the expectations of the hype. I was wrong. It was amazing.
Oh! Cakey Creativity 