Legend is a book I’ve been wanting to read since I heard about it about a month ago. Unlike most books I’ve been hearing about lately, it’s one I was actually able to go out and obtain within a few weeks! I swear, my “waiting on. . .” list is too long for my own good. But I digress. We start with our hero/criminal Day, who grabs us immediately with the narration: “My mother thinks I’m dead. Obviously I’m not dead, but it’s safer for her to think so.” Hit the ground running? Check. Interested already? Check. Snarky italics? Check. That passes my first-page test.
June is our hero/military specialist, and also serves as our other narrator. She’s not as sarcastic, but just as smart as Day — perhaps more so. After all, Day failed his Trials test (which every ten-year old takes), relegating him to a life away from everyone he loves. Meanwhile, June is a prodigy — the only person ever to score a perfect 1500 on the Trials.
June and Day soon find themselves in the thick of one of the biggest story lines in their futuristic Los Angeles: Day, the mastermind criminal, being pursued by June, the prodigy girl. Did I mention that they’re both teenagers, June’s parents died in a car accident, Day’s family is being stricken my the plague, and there are a ton of awesome plot elements I can’t reveal because I don’t want to deny you the experience? Are you interested yet?
I really enjoyed the pace of this book: fast enough to keep me interested, but not so fast that I couldn’t savor it as it was moving along. I also liked that Day and June’s chapters alternated, and in different fonts. It helped their voices come alive for me, and was also an easy unconscious reminder of who was narrating.
If there is anything I could say about Legend that isn’t positive, it’s that it is fairly predictable. However, even as I was reading, I was saying to myself “Self, you know exactly how this is going to turn out. Yet it’s interesting enough that you don’t seem to care!” Like any good book that follows an established story line, there are times where it follows prediction, and times when it deviates in just the right ways.
I recommend Legend to fans of YA lit, especially dystopian novels. While it doesn’t have the gravitas books like Divergent have, it is a great book in its own right, and I’m very much excited for the sequel(s)!
Rating: 4 out of 5 fish. 
Wyz Reads 
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I loved this book and your review had me laughing at times and nodding in agreement at others. I’m definitely looking forward to the rest of this series too. So glad you started the blog because I like the personality of your reviews!
Thanks! I find your reviews really good and enjoyable to read; your kind words mean a lot to me!
Do you have any recommendations for dystopian or postapocalyptic short fiction? Doesn’t necessarily have to be YA.
I’m most familiar with YA, so be prepared for those to be my recommendations to you. Some of my favorites are the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld and Divergent by Veronica Roth. I saw the following list on Twitter the other day (posted by @kelleemoye), though I haven’t read any of them myself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/14/scholastics-top-picks-dys_n_1149644.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003. They made somebody’s top ten, so that’s probably worth something.
I just bought this book this past weekend and plan to read it during the break. I hope I enjoy it as much as you and others that have reviewed it.
Crys
I hope you like it! Be sure to let me know what you think.