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A review by medicore
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Goodness.
First off, the ending of this book was absolutely incredible.
I’m a bit conflicted on my rating, because there’s a lot of stuff that I liked, while there also being stuff that I didn’t like.
THE DISLIKES:
I think a lot of the characters are weak— because there are so many of them and they aren’t all relevant to Bree’s story, they being to feel like filler names instead of actual characters.
The book acts like life for Bree doesn’t exist outside the Order or the therapy sessions— she hardly mentions school despite being at a college campus as an EC student, hardly spends any time with Alice despite them being best friends, and hardly does anything that doesn’t relate to the Order or anything like that. While I understand that those other things might not tie into the plot that well (and the book’s already so big that you don't want to add extra scenes lol), this ends up tying into the reason why I feel like the characters are weak—- it feels like just “plot, plot, plot” without much character interactions.
I think that is also my problem with Alice as a character. She is supposed to be Bree’s best friend, but because she is not connected to the Order, there is hardly any interaction with her to the point where I have no reason to like her at all, especially when she starts shaming Bree in the beginning.
Also, the part with the therapist bothered me because what she was doing was lowkey illegal and it kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I wish Bree could have had an actual therapy session or instead made the therapist see Bree outside of the therapy role so it wouldn’t be so weird. I really liked how the book was dealing with Bree’s grief, so I thought that the therapy part not being taken seriously was a bummer.
I also found a lot of the terminology to be really hard to follow. I understand that Bree is suddenly thrust into this world and is hearing all these terms all at once, but if a huge part of the book is about the Order and its hierarchy, and I still honestly couldn’t tell you the difference between Legendborn, Page, Scion, and Squire after reading all of book 1, I don’t think that the information was conveyed that well. And I have a feeling I only remember so much because I was annotating— without it, I would probably be lost. While I personally didn’t find this enough to confuse me to the point of not wanting to read, I would definitely keep this in mind.
My final dislike has to do with the pacing. While I will acknowledge that it took me a long ass time to read this book, the text does support my issue with the pacing, and I feel like my long break from reading was why. So much stuff happens in the book but is written in a slow manner so that you’d think it took a while, but then the actual timeline is quick— for example, most books like this would end up taking a semester or year to get through, but this book manages to stuff everything (romance plot lines, what happened to Bree’s mom, the Legendborn trials, and more) into it in a couple of weeks, which kept throwing me off every once in a while when I would think so much time had passed and it had only been a couple of days.
THE LIKES:
I love, love, love the way Bree’s grief is discussed in this book, and I also just love the way she views the world in general as a Black woman, as someone who is also a Black “woman.”
The constant plot twists in the book were also incredible and it actually had me guessing certain parts of the plot because I was actually curious and wanted to find out that badly— something I haven’t noticed myself doing before.
I like how the King Arthur retelling was incorporated into the story itself and it inspired me quite a bit with my own storytelling.
This book actually has a well-written love triangle (yeah it is very insta-lovely considering the actual timeline that the book has, but I don’t feel as affected by that because of how long the pacing feels while reading). I actually liked both of the love interests, and even though I firmly held one opinion in the beginning, the character development of Sel is suddenly making me rethink things 😳 (lmaoo let me tell you I was stressseedd when I realized I understood the appeal) so I give the book huge congrats on that part— this also ties in to me really liking Bree, Nick, and Sel as characters (and I also liked William but he wasn't involved in the love triangle so I didn’t list him out there lol)
The pacing at the end was so, so good and that was the most I read in one sitting— 12 whole chapters (my previous max was 3 and that was a slog to get through whoops)
OVERALL:
Despite my long list of negatives, none of them felt strong enough for me to rate the book negatively, especially with all the moments that I do like. I can’t wait to read the second book of this series! I was initially going to rate the book 4 stars, but after more consideration, I bumped up that rating to 5 stars.
First off, the ending of this book was absolutely incredible.
I’m a bit conflicted on my rating, because there’s a lot of stuff that I liked, while there also being stuff that I didn’t like.
THE DISLIKES:
I think a lot of the characters are weak— because there are so many of them and they aren’t all relevant to Bree’s story, they being to feel like filler names instead of actual characters.
The book acts like life for Bree doesn’t exist outside the Order or the therapy sessions— she hardly mentions school despite being at a college campus as an EC student, hardly spends any time with Alice despite them being best friends, and hardly does anything that doesn’t relate to the Order or anything like that. While I understand that those other things might not tie into the plot that well (and the book’s already so big that you don't want to add extra scenes lol), this ends up tying into the reason why I feel like the characters are weak—- it feels like just “plot, plot, plot” without much character interactions.
I think that is also my problem with Alice as a character. She is supposed to be Bree’s best friend, but because she is not connected to the Order, there is hardly any interaction with her to the point where I have no reason to like her at all, especially when she starts shaming Bree in the beginning.
Also, the part with the therapist bothered me because what she was doing was lowkey illegal and it kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I wish Bree could have had an actual therapy session or instead made the therapist see Bree outside of the therapy role so it wouldn’t be so weird. I really liked how the book was dealing with Bree’s grief, so I thought that the therapy part not being taken seriously was a bummer.
I also found a lot of the terminology to be really hard to follow. I understand that Bree is suddenly thrust into this world and is hearing all these terms all at once, but if a huge part of the book is about the Order and its hierarchy, and I still honestly couldn’t tell you the difference between Legendborn, Page, Scion, and Squire after reading all of book 1, I don’t think that the information was conveyed that well. And I have a feeling I only remember so much because I was annotating— without it, I would probably be lost. While I personally didn’t find this enough to confuse me to the point of not wanting to read, I would definitely keep this in mind.
My final dislike has to do with the pacing. While I will acknowledge that it took me a long ass time to read this book, the text does support my issue with the pacing, and I feel like my long break from reading was why. So much stuff happens in the book but is written in a slow manner so that you’d think it took a while, but then the actual timeline is quick— for example, most books like this would end up taking a semester or year to get through, but this book manages to stuff everything (romance plot lines, what happened to Bree’s mom, the Legendborn trials, and more) into it in a couple of weeks, which kept throwing me off every once in a while when I would think so much time had passed and it had only been a couple of days.
THE LIKES:
I love, love, love the way Bree’s grief is discussed in this book, and I also just love the way she views the world in general as a Black woman, as someone who is also a Black “woman.”
The constant plot twists in the book were also incredible and it actually had me guessing certain parts of the plot because I was actually curious and wanted to find out that badly— something I haven’t noticed myself doing before.
I like how the King Arthur retelling was incorporated into the story itself and it inspired me quite a bit with my own storytelling.
This book actually has a well-written love triangle (yeah it is very insta-lovely considering the actual timeline that the book has, but I don’t feel as affected by that because of how long the pacing feels while reading). I actually liked both of the love interests, and even though I firmly held one opinion in the beginning, the character development of Sel is suddenly making me rethink things 😳 (lmaoo let me tell you I was stressseedd when I realized I understood the appeal) so I give the book huge congrats on that part— this also ties in to me really liking Bree, Nick, and Sel as characters (and I also liked William but he wasn't involved in the love triangle so I didn’t list him out there lol)
The pacing at the end was so, so good and that was the most I read in one sitting— 12 whole chapters (my previous max was 3 and that was a slog to get through whoops)
OVERALL:
Despite my long list of negatives, none of them felt strong enough for me to rate the book negatively, especially with all the moments that I do like. I can’t wait to read the second book of this series! I was initially going to rate the book 4 stars, but after more consideration, I bumped up that rating to 5 stars.