Rebel

ok, how should i put it… i believe that there's no such thing as «young adult fiction» ― there's just badly written fiction that a person with some reading history and taste could not possibly enjoy… so only (a part of) young audience keeps giving it five start on goodreads. marie lu's «legend» is, in my humble opinion, just a piece of such fiction.

essentially, it's a barbie-story disguised as dystopian sci-fi. you get your barbie-girl who's the best in everyting. you get your ken ― this time it's the barbie-girl's brother. you get a barbie-boy who's basically a barbie-girl, only a boy =) and then you have your villains who are just evil ― no reasons, no explications, no history, just absolute evil. with this setup the story, the attempt at creating a dystopian world ― everything is secondary to teh barbie-girl meeting the barbie-boy and, well, kissing.

the resulting text is as pathetically naïve as it's naïvely pathetic. and the limits of the genre are so strict that if you've read at least one of those sci-fi barbie-stories ("the 5th wave", "in the after" etc.) ― there's little reason to read any more. unless, of course, you love barbie-literature.

p.s. so far i've only read one series that takes all the same ingredients... and still achieves something pleasant to read ― amie kaufman's "the illuminae files" series.

Full review on Reader's Dialogue: readersdialogue.blogspot.com/2013/01/legend.html

The world of the Republic is so vividly portrayed, from the wealthy elite to the street kids - everything is so detailed that as you read, you feel when the characters move from one to the other. When June enters the Lake Sector, you don't have to work to remember that she's out of her comfort zone. The way events are described through her eyes lets you absorb her feeling of being out of place. And when Day is in the other part of the Republic, again it's obvious that he doesn't belong there, just from the way he moves and talks in contrast to the very different behavior of the people who do belong.

What makes this so important is the way June and Day interact, both before they're allies and after. There's always a clear division between them, even as their similarities and shared goals become clearer, even as June is swayed by Day's accusations against the Republic. Their relationship is so much richer because of this, because their personalities match the places they came from. This changes though, toward the end of the book, and I'm assuming it will change even more in Prodigy.

I'm looking forward to seeing how their relationship develops, but also I'm impatiently waiting to find out just what secrets the Republic is hiding, what the story with the Colonies and Patriots is, and I'm hoping we get to see a little more about how the United States ended up divided and at war with each other...