Book #2: Legend, by Marie Lu
Jan. 5th, 2012 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityDystopian future (California), military society, genetic engineering, tiny things can kill you, so can big ones, it's possible one of the characters is telepathic, the title is so brilliant I CAN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT IT.
I have now started and erased this review six times. Because sometimes I get hyper-focused on geography. And sometimes I get hyper-focused on numismatics. And sometimes I get hyper-focused on the way that Day thought of June as the Girl and June thought of Day as the boy. And there might have been a sideline into how blogging will save us all. And a bit of how I think this might actually be season 3 of Jericho, with a more interesting cast.
So a numbered list, I think, or this will get out of hand.
1. I NEED A MAP! I mean, I know where things are generally, and I looked up Las Angeles on Google Earth, but...yes. I do live the idea of a split USA, though, and the flag the Patriots use, and how the word Patriot managed to change while still meaning the exact same thing. Which leads me to...
2. THE COIN! It was this amazing THING and...UGH. The idea that Americans could repress their entire history like that...scary and fascinating. So much trouble over so small a thing...
3. CAPITAL LETTERS! OR LACK THEREOF! I LOVE IT! Also, even though I'm pretty sure Lu only used the word "privilege" once, it was ALL OVER this book. It hurt, but it was SO REAL. Nothing June did was cruel, really, but so, so privileged.
4. I love that the Republic has such crazy tech, while the Colonies have basically recovered from whatever it was that made the country split in the first place. Or at least made some kind of non-draconian progress.
5. I think Day is played by Skeet Ulrich. If, you know, Skeet Ulrich was played by a fifteen-year-old John Cho. (That, by the way, is why I never have good pictures of my own characters in my head. Or at least not ones I can describe to other people.)
6. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tessagratton said, I love that both Day and June are SO GOOD at their jobs. No one is dumb.
7. Everyone is exactly a stereotype. And I don't mean that in a bad way. They're all so stereotypical, it comes right back around to perfection, and I'm not entirely sure how. We have the Boy Born Out of Place, the Girl Born In It, the Female Commander (totally Michelle Forbes, btw, because she is exactly that terrifying), and the Climber.
8. Who doesn't love a good conspiracy? Especially one with kissing? ;)
9. Dakota probably includes Manitoba, Saskatchewan and southern Alberta. Geographically (and genetically, incidentally), that's the most likely. Eastern Canada would follow Maine and New York, Ontario would end up with Michigan and Ohio, and BC would go with California. I spend too much time thinking about these things.
10. I'm serious about not being able to talk about the title. It is SO SIMPLE and SO BRILLIANT on SO MANY LEVELS, not the least of which is the way that Day and June react to one another.
11. The pacing was pretty much perfect, which must be tough to pull off in a two character POV format, but Lu did it really well.
I'm giving it 9.5/10, less half a point for non-mapiness and the yellow font Day wrote in, which I found incredibly distracting. It's possible that my room just has poor lighting. In any case, I am excited for the sequel (I assume there's a sequel? Or was that an open ending? I mean, it's not a cliff-hanger, but it has that feel to it.)
As far as recs and related books go, it's the Usual Suspects: The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc. This was actually much more like Divergent than it was like The Hunger Games. There's hope in Divergent, and there was hope in this. The Hunger Games leaves me feeling like I've been hollowed out with an ice cream scoop.
I have now started and erased this review six times. Because sometimes I get hyper-focused on geography. And sometimes I get hyper-focused on numismatics. And sometimes I get hyper-focused on the way that Day thought of June as the Girl and June thought of Day as the boy. And there might have been a sideline into how blogging will save us all. And a bit of how I think this might actually be season 3 of Jericho, with a more interesting cast.
So a numbered list, I think, or this will get out of hand.
1. I NEED A MAP! I mean, I know where things are generally, and I looked up Las Angeles on Google Earth, but...yes. I do live the idea of a split USA, though, and the flag the Patriots use, and how the word Patriot managed to change while still meaning the exact same thing. Which leads me to...
2. THE COIN! It was this amazing THING and...UGH. The idea that Americans could repress their entire history like that...scary and fascinating. So much trouble over so small a thing...
3. CAPITAL LETTERS! OR LACK THEREOF! I LOVE IT! Also, even though I'm pretty sure Lu only used the word "privilege" once, it was ALL OVER this book. It hurt, but it was SO REAL. Nothing June did was cruel, really, but so, so privileged.
4. I love that the Republic has such crazy tech, while the Colonies have basically recovered from whatever it was that made the country split in the first place. Or at least made some kind of non-draconian progress.
5. I think Day is played by Skeet Ulrich. If, you know, Skeet Ulrich was played by a fifteen-year-old John Cho. (That, by the way, is why I never have good pictures of my own characters in my head. Or at least not ones I can describe to other people.)
6. As
tessagratton said, I love that both Day and June are SO GOOD at their jobs. No one is dumb.7. Everyone is exactly a stereotype. And I don't mean that in a bad way. They're all so stereotypical, it comes right back around to perfection, and I'm not entirely sure how. We have the Boy Born Out of Place, the Girl Born In It, the Female Commander (totally Michelle Forbes, btw, because she is exactly that terrifying), and the Climber.
8. Who doesn't love a good conspiracy? Especially one with kissing? ;)
9. Dakota probably includes Manitoba, Saskatchewan and southern Alberta. Geographically (and genetically, incidentally), that's the most likely. Eastern Canada would follow Maine and New York, Ontario would end up with Michigan and Ohio, and BC would go with California. I spend too much time thinking about these things.
10. I'm serious about not being able to talk about the title. It is SO SIMPLE and SO BRILLIANT on SO MANY LEVELS, not the least of which is the way that Day and June react to one another.
11. The pacing was pretty much perfect, which must be tough to pull off in a two character POV format, but Lu did it really well.
I'm giving it 9.5/10, less half a point for non-mapiness and the yellow font Day wrote in, which I found incredibly distracting. It's possible that my room just has poor lighting. In any case, I am excited for the sequel (I assume there's a sequel? Or was that an open ending? I mean, it's not a cliff-hanger, but it has that feel to it.)
As far as recs and related books go, it's the Usual Suspects: The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc. This was actually much more like Divergent than it was like The Hunger Games. There's hope in Divergent, and there was hope in this. The Hunger Games leaves me feeling like I've been hollowed out with an ice cream scoop.
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 10:09 pm (UTC)Not that this is a slam against Divergent. I really enjoyed Divergent, it's just that the world itself explicitly restricted the story. Which is fine and great, just makes it stand out from Legend and THG to me.
/long explanation you didn't actually ask for.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 10:12 pm (UTC)Omg. Diverge. Haha. Ha. Ha.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 10:14 pm (UTC)Out of curiosity, do you put Ship Breaker in dystopia or post-apocalyptic?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 10:15 pm (UTC)...but it is in the pile of 68 novels sitting on my desk waiting for my attention at the moment.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 10:16 pm (UTC)That book is fun to sell.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-07 12:55 am (UTC)(And I love The Hunger Games and Divergent equally, so this... sounds like it'll be right up my alley.)