Prodigy (Legend #2)
By Marie Lu
Genre: YA Dystopian
Recommended Ages: 15+

Injured and on the run, it has been seven days since June and Day barely escaped Los Angeles and the Republic with their lives. Day is believed dead having lost his own brother to an execution squad who thought they were assassinating him. June is now the Republic’s most wanted traitor. Desperate for help, they turn to the Patriots – a vigilante rebel group sworn to bring down the Republic. But can they trust them or have they unwittingly become pawns in the most terrifying of political

The Gist:

June and Day continue their campaign against The Republic in the second book of the Legend series by Marie Lu.  We get to see both main characters step up to the new and more intense challenges before them as their mission to take down the Republic becomes a reality. But through twists and turns, even I was left wondering if the Republic was the real enemy or if this was once again a case of bad people ruining good-intended things.

I thought this was an adequate sequel to Legend. There certainly were more twists and the plot felt deeper, made me think more about who was good and who was bad through complex characters like Anden, Kaede, and Thomas. But it still failed to really grab me. There was lots of action and strong, commendable efforts to make me ship June and Day, but I just did get there. Though I will admit I liked them as characters better in this book. They felt less flat than they did in Legend because there was much more character development.

What I Liked:

We really get to see some of June’s superior intelligence and deductive reasoning take center stage in the book.  For the longest time I kept asking myself “Why was she some star in the Republic military? I don’t get how she’s exceptional or better than others.” Well when she’s in the belly of the beast we really see how intricate her mind is and how she’s able to string actions and words of people together to figure out what’s really going on.

I liked that Day and June argued. That make seem strange, but I think it’s important to note that even in stories, no couple is perfect. And given the drastically different backgrounds of Day and June, it makes the story so much more realistic. People that different would argue. But the best part was that they chose to forgive each other. At the end of the day (haha, didn’t even do that on purpose), their love for each other was more important. That’s such a great lesson and wonderful thing to see in a story for young readers.

We get an idea of what the world outside of the Republic is like in this book, which the first booked lacked. I enjoyed seeing how the Republic fit into Earth as a whole when the book takes place.

What I Didn’t Like:

The attempts at love triangles felt half-hearted to me. I understand that you don’t want the reader to ever give up on the choice couple, but other potential love interests didn’t amount to more than minor distractions in my mind. The whole time I knew there was no real chance Day or June would fall for anyone else, which made the love triangle parts feel a tad like filler than a real part of the story.

It would have been nice if June and Day spent more time in the Colonies, if only to get a better idea of what life in the Colonies is like. We get a glimpse, but I would have liked to have seen a little more. Is it like that everywhere? Could they have met a fairly powerful person in the Colonies? I would have liked a more concrete way to decide if they were good or bad.

Like Legend, the beginning was slow for me and once we got to know more about Anden, I feel like the plot was fairly predictable.

LunasLuckyRating: 3/5 Lunas