Overall: 🐢🐢🐢
Storyline:
Writing Style:
Character Development:
World-building:
“This is why I’m here. I need one wild horizon – one sharp moment that belongs only to me – before I return to battle.”
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
The Story:
What if the stories of the round table and Kind Arthur weren’t just a fairytale told to kids? But rather a reality happening around us everyday and we just can’t see it? Well most of us… The truth of the round table was to protect the world from true evil and magic gone rouge.
Bree Matthews is still grieving her mother’s death and finds her way into a college program for advanced high school students. She wants nothing more than to make it through this program and to find a distraction from the pain she is feeling. But day one on campus and she witnesses her first magical attack between a flying demon and a group of other students. So much for an easy semester.
When one of the students tries – and fails – to wipe her memory of the event, Bree realizes that this isn’t the first time this has happened. It happened the day the hospital told her about her mother’s death. She knows now that there is more to the story than what she remembers. She has a new goal: infiltrate this “Legendborn” group and figure out the truth.
However, as more of the truth comes to light from this secret society and talk of a magical war soon happening, Bree has to figure out how far she’ll go to find the truth. And will what she is learning about herself and her own gifts be enough to help?
Key Elements:
Fiction, Young Adult, King Arthur, Knights, Magic,
Others in the Series:
Book 2: Waiting for title to be announced
Why This Rating?
I was really hoping this would be a fantastic book. I love Arthurian stories and the legends. The creativity that authors can take those old stories and create them into their own tales is wonderful. You can always find the hints of the original legends coming through the stories; however, there is still enough of a twist that you don’t feel like it is just the same old rehash happening again. With this book, I saw the old stories peaking through but Deonn did a good job at taking that and still make her own world and characters. I was having fun trying to guess who was what knight from the round table (without looking at the chart in the back of the book). And I liked that characteristics of the old knights were present in the story – wonderful touch! As a whole, I thought the story was a good one but nothing that blew me out of the water.
There was so much information! I felt like I was having to go back to school just to learn what was happening. There is a moment when authors have to start giving their audience information about the history in their story, I get that. Then there is a moment when authors just dump information on the readers about their world and that is kind of what it felt like. Because Bree is just as ignorant about this world she just uncovered, she (like us) is learning everything that is happening. Perhaps it would be a bit better easier if this wasn’t a ground up build from new words and positions in the order to other groups and creature names. It is A LOT to digest and keep track of during the read. I had to stop and reread a few of the sections to make sure I was following the information better. I can’t imagine what a person who hasn’t read or isn’t familiar with the legends would be experiencing. Again, I really like the old stories and I struggled during a few moments to comprehend what just happened in Deonn’s book. Don’t know if there was an easier way of approaching this problem, but I wasn’t a fan.
I appreciated the way that the first book ended. It has a really nice set up for the second book. I didn’t feel like it was a heart stopping cliff-hanger – and trust me I’ve run across a few of those lately. I am a bit curious as to how one of the interactions will develop between two characters (trying not to spoil which is way that is so vague). The fact that I do have some intrigue towards this thought and a few others that I can’t list without spoiling, does show that the story did have some interest for me. I think a lot of it is because it does play along the lines of an Arthur story, but it does shine some credit to the author and the fact that there are a few things that can catch a person’s interest despite a lower rating. I haven’t decided if I will pick up the second book and read it when it is released.
Time to get lost in the next story!
