Book Review: Legend

WARNING!This post contains spoilers (FOR MORE THAN JUST LEGEND)! 
The contents of this post are entirely in my raw, biased opinion and should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. 













































You know what I like? Violence. 
You know what I also like? Intrigue. 
You know else I also like? Kids diddling about with sharp pointed object and devices that launch sharp pointed objects.

You know what Legend has? All of them!

You know what's starting to get old? Love triangles.
You know else is starting to get old? Dystopian governments that are initially made out to be the best thing ever than in the timespan between the prologue and chapter 4 the protagonist is already plotting to overthrow them. 

Just face it: Dystopias and love triangles are getting a bit cliche in novels, especially young adult ones. They all seem to follow the same formula of a guy and a girl and guy and some side characters toppling a questionably stable government and then the girl kicks one guy off the ship to drown in the cold Arctic waters while she lives happily ever after with the guy she didn't just drown. 



But then you have the deviants. Those novels that, on the surface, look like your typical Hunger Games or Brave New World re-skin but on the inside they throw that off and come out as something absolutely wonderful. Under the Never Sky, Struck, Divergent, and a few more come to mind. But now, undoubtedly there is a new champion among them. 

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Allow me to just jump off something really high for such a terrible pun. I'm sorry. I truly am. 


So Legend is about a boy and a girl, as most books these days seem to be about. Only in this one, the focus isn't breaking a government. In fact, the actual government hardly plays a part in the novel. 

Yes. Yes, I know they were involved in some the major plot twists and revelations, but that doesn't mean they book was about them.  

Examples of the above:
Hunger Games is about breaking the Capitol. (They win)
Matched is about breaking the Society. (Intentionally(?) left to the imagination)



Legend, as I mentioned before, deviates. Instead of being about smashing governments while utilizing the best plot armor known to man, it's about the girl finding the boy to avenge her dead brother the boy allegedly killed. 

That's basically the back of the book.

Here's my take (and a comparison):

The more I think about it, the more I can't get over how similar it is to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Someone dies, main character joins military to fix it, uncovers massive, deep-rooted government conspiracy filled with betrayal and backstabbing and dark secrets. Not to mention great characters, kick-butt action scenes and an actually believable plot that you don't have to turn your brain off to understand. 

And even though they were extremely similar, that's probably what pulled me into the novel in the first place. The only time I though about Fullmetal Alchemist was when I initially drew Day in my head and based what looks and sounds like of the short blond kid in the above picture. 

I didn't realize the concepts were similar until I started writing this. But based on the cover info for Prodigy, the similarities end with Legend. 


So, I liked the plot. That's just one aspect I liked. 





Guess which one is Legend. Go one, do it. 

... 


Yep. It's a LINE. 

I SWEET, NOT-CLICHE LINE. 

There's so many love triangles these days I wonder if authors throw them at competition like ninja stars or something. 

But Legend doesn't have any of that. Which is a good thing. Sometimes love triangles work. Most of the time they just cause annoying things like 'TEAM PEETA!' and 'TEAM GALE!' to pop up when the former of the two characters is about as useless as a burnt loaf of bread. 



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But yeah. Legend ain't got time fo' dat. Although, saying it's a line is wrong. It's more like this (I'll just use anime characters to represent people because I can.)




Captain Thomas




Day
 

June

<--------------->



















Captain Thomas. You can summarize his life by playing as the Spy on Team Fortres 2 for a bit (make sure you backstab people!) and then looking at the picture below. It basically summarizes his love life at the moment. 






Gonna wrap this up pretty fast because I want to get to sleep sooner rather than later.

LEGEND: 9/10.

Why: Development is great. Wonderful plot twists that were executed (teehee)flawlessly and powerfully. I love the main characters. I love... pretty much everything about it. Except what's said below. 

Where that one star went: The ending didn't tie together enough. It ended... but didn't. Yes, I'm well aware there's a sequel. But endings are supposed to be, well... endings. Not just stating what they're going to do next, then ending it. 

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