Book Review: Legend, Prodigy, Champion By Marie Lu

Genre: Young Adult Dystopian

LEGEND By Marie Lu

This was one of those books that started so good I wanted to read it slowly and savor it. I was also afraid that it wouldn’t hold up to the outstanding beginning, but it did! The plot, the characters, the world, the voice, they were all perfect! I loved it all! (Molly, tone down the fangirl…)

Day is fifteen and the most wanted person in the Republic. He’s guilty of numerous crimes, including theft, breaking into military bases and blowing up jets, but he never hurts anyone. He lives on the streets with a little girl named Tess and secretly watches over his family who believes him to be dead. At the start of Legend the plague has spread to the poor Lake sector where his family lives.

June is also fifteen. At ten every child takes the trial and the results decide what their lives will be like. Where Day failed his test June did more than pass, she’s the only one ever to get a perfect 1500 score. She lives with her brother, a captain in the military (their parents are dead) and goes to the top academy in the country. She’s always getting in trouble for her outrageous stunts; her latest was scaling a sky scraper to see how fast she could do it. (Copying something that Day’s known for.)

The characters are both similar people, even though they’ve led very different lives. They’re both really smart and talented, but in different ways. June is the kind of person who notices every detail and kicks butt in a fight and Day is great at making complicated plans and leaping about on buildings. The story is told from both points of view and I rarely confused the two of them.

In a Dystopian there usually comes a time when the main character realizes what kind of a world they really live in. Day already knows how terrible the government is, but June buys the propaganda. She’s told the truth, but she also figures it out for herself and as such it’s more gradual and realistic for her to totally change her beliefs.

The world the author created is rich and I could really picture it in my head, from June’s fancy apartment to the streets of the Lake Sector.

Legend is a unique Dystopian and my favorite so far!

9/10 Stars!

PRODIGY

Prodigy was almost as good as Legend. Everything wrapped up so wall it felt like the final book of the trilogy not the second. I’m glad they were all released otherwise I would’ve been screaming for the next one. Though things wrapped up, not everything was happily ever after.

At the start of Prodigy I liked both June and Day, but I had no feelings whatsoever about whether they wound up together or not. By the end I was like, NO!! They’re meant to be! (Whispers otp. Molly your fangirl is showing)

Some of the dialogue to catch readers up felt a bit forced, but this was only at the beginning.

I enjoyed learning how the Republic started, that’s the one thing I was wondering about while reading Legend. (We also learned about the Colonies and a bit about the world at large.)

The side characters were better fleshed out and we were introduced to a couple of new characters in the Patriots. (The group who fights against the Republic.) After reading dystopians I automatically distrust everyone the characters meet.

8/10 Stars

CHAMPION

As much as I wanted to read this book, I was afraid to. So many dystopians don’t end happily. (Especially the popular ones, what’s up with that?)

In Champion the war with the Colonies has accelerated and the Patriots are back along with Tess. We also got to see Antarctica, which was cool! (And there could so be another dystopian set from there.)

Talk about a roller coaster ride of emotions! I didn’t like the entire story line with Day. In my opinion it wasn’t necessary and took away from the story.

THE END: Though it’s probably considered a happy ending, I wasn’t happy. The epilogue ten years later tries to fix things, but it felt like too little too late. I think I’ll pretend it ended happily after prodigy. ;)

8/10 Stars

What did you read this week?

Novel Editing - What to cut

As a child whenever I finished a rough draft I felt like, "Okay, it's done. Why would I need to edit it? It's perfect." If only it were that easy.

I'm still working on editing my novel. I'm struggling with my word count, so I'm cutting away. Here are some tips that I've found helpful.

* The hardest part for me is cutting something out that I think is good. If it isn't relevant to the plot or character development it has to go, no matter how beautiful the scene or how funny the dialogue.

* Don't repeat telling the same tale more than once. I always want to hear how a character retells the story when relating it to another character, but this redundancy isn't necessary.

* I cut out the backstory, working it into the story itself and dramatically reducing the word count.

* Removing words, such as just, actually, like. If I can still understand the sentence without the word, it doesn't need to be there. This includes removing adjectives when there is more than one in a sentence or overusing the -ly ending words.

* Make things less wordy. Rewrite sentences keeping the important parts, but using fewer words. Easier said than done, but most of my cuts seem to be of this nature.

*If my mind wanders during a section or a sentence, it doesn't seem fluid or is confusing I know it has to be rewritten or cut entirely.

* Excess descriptions. I still want to tell what the characters and places look like, but I've found the key is that the more important the scene or character the more descripton they need. If it is a passing village not important to the plot I don't have to spend all that much time describing it.

* What NOT to do: Don't write a summary instead of dialogue, especially if it is important to the plot. I don't mean leaving in every small talk conversation during dinner, but I like to feel like I am actually there when the character's talk or do something as opposed to reading about it after the fact.

Agree? Disagree? Know of anything I missed? Please let me know, I appreciate your feedback.

Characters and their flaws

In order to make characters well rounded and have them feel like real people they can't be perfect, they need flaws.

I think it is easier to give characters flaws than strengths you don't possess. Even if I'm not afraid of something my characters still can be. I'm currently facing the problem of giving my character a good sense of direction, whereas I have none. I am doing this by making detailed maps and writing down directions so I can make it seem like she knows where she's going.

Some character faults can seem cliched such as clumsiness. When I write a character doing something I have actually done it somehow seems less credible. What are some good character faults?

Gobbledygook

When writing fantasy or science fiction you have to create so much, this includes a lot of words. The names of people, worlds, magic or invented sciences and sometimes even more.

As a reader it can be very confusing picking up a book for the first time and finding it full of nonsense words. Some authors create new words for everything, days of the week, units of measurement, seasons and even social classes. It can be a bit overwhelming at first. So where do you draw the line at what to rename?

This is one of the problems I faced as a writer. I wanted to rename enough to make it feel like a unique alien world, yet not confuse my readers. In the end I decided to keep my renaming to a minimum, partly for my own sanity, but mostly because my book is more geared towards young adults and I wanted it to be as accessible as possible.

I feel the need to also defend authors who chose to do the opposite. One of my favorite authors, LE Modesitte Jr, always renames absolutely everything. It hasn't prevented me from enjoying his work, though it did take me a bit of perseverance to get into it in the first place.