Title: Legendborn
Author: Tracy Deonn
Series: Legendborn #1
Genre: Urban Fantasy/ Magic/ Retelling
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: September 15th, 2020
Edition: Kindle Edition, 511 pages
Source: Library
Synopsis:
After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.
A flying demon feeding on human energies.
A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.
And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.
The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.
She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.
Guys, people, folks... this book was so damn good. Everything from the characters to the plot, to the writing. It all just worked to near perfection for me. I've had not the best reading year, and while I've read books that I enjoyed that I loved among all the books that fell short for me when they should have been books that I loved, and among all the DNF's I've had this year that feel like more than I'd ever had before, this book feels like a breath of fresh air to my reading year and I wish I had read it sooner.
I love retellings, but I don't like when a retelling uses the exact same characters and rehashes nearly the exact same story. I didn't know this was Arthurian I started reading it, I actually hadn't read the synopsis in months. I just heard good things about it and decided to pick it up. I was really excited when I started to realize that it was Arthurian inspired, it took the legend in such a new and interesting direction and I devoured this book in about a week. That's the fastest I've read a book in a long time.
I loved all the characters, Bree is such a fantastic protagonist. There is so much about her character that I wish more characters had. She certainly breaks the mold in many ways for YA fantasy protagonists. But more than that, she is smart in a way a lot of YA protagonists aren't. She lets common sense rule her actions, she focuses her trust on people who prove she can count on them. It was something that I'd really like more characters to do.
I liked Nick as a character, but there was never anything that stood out to me about his character. His motives felt a little selfish at times and compared to other characters he didn't seem to have a strong personality. Sel, his character had a lot of personality. And his motives were more clear and he was just more interesting overall.
I really liked William's character as well, he was one of the first people in the Order to not be outwardly rude to Bree at every opportunity. I hope he gets more page time in the rest of the series, however many books it's going to be.
I wish Alice, Bree's best friend, had more page time, but I feel like she will in the coming books based on how things ended in this one.
There's a bunch of side characters whose names I've already kind of forgotten... they were more minor characters though.
There are a couple of small things about this book that I didn't care for. The insta-love with Nick and Bree. This book takes place over the course of maybe a month, two at most, and their relationship gets to the "I will sacrifice my life for you" quickly and that's just not realistic at all. I also suspect that there will be a more prominent love triangle in the next book, and I'm not really looking forward to that. I just hope that if there is one, it's done in a way that doesn't feel cliché. The other thing is, I kept forgetting that Bree was 16. She honestly seemed like she was closer to 18. I know it's just two years, but she just seemed older than the character's age at times. Those aren't really huge complaints, that had little effect on the overall plot, so it's easy to overlook.
I'm just excited for the sequel, I can't wait to read anything written by this author.
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