A review by deedireads
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

TL;DR REVIEW:

Legendborn was everything I could ask for in a YA low fantasy novel — a top-notch magic system, lots of layers, a strong central mystery, and swoony characters. I loved it.

For you if: You want to get absorbed into a gripping new adventure.

FULL REVIEW:

“From buried lives to beaten ones. From blood stolen to blood hidden. I map this terrain's sins, the invisible, and the many, and hold them close. Because even if the pain of those sins takes my breath away, the pain feels like belonging. And ignoring it, after all I've just witnessed, would be loss.”

Legendborn is one of those books where so many people loved when it first came out, I just KNEW I was going to regret having waited so long to finally pick it up. And yet I did wait. And here we are. Because yes, this book is as good as it’s hyped up to be.

It’s about a 16-year-old girl named Bree who enrolls at UNC Chapel Hill for their Early College program shortly after her mother died in a car accident. But from her first night on campus, she finds herself increasingly tangled in a secret society dating back to the time of King Arthur, although of course nothing is quite as it seems. At the same time, she begins to learn more about her mother, and her own family legacy, and how colonialism, violence, and ancestry connect them in surprising ways. And, of course there’s a boy. Maybe two boys.

This book is just so, so well written. The magic system is voluptuously imagined, and the worldbuilding is perfectly paced. The central mystery is compelling and layered and gets more and more intriguing the more you read. Bree’s grief over her mother’s death is nuanced and massive and heartbreaking. And the main characters! The relationships between them! Just so good.

And then on top of all that, Deonn tips this book from “really good” into “great” with the way she weaves in so much heart and wisdom and history and grief on the ongoing legacy of enslavement in the South, what it’s like to be a Black woman in a world built by and for enslavers, and how it feels to take up the mantle of strength and resistance that one’s ancestors were forced to build.

Brb, preordering book two (out in November).
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