Review of Legend

Review of Legend

Legend is a typical Dystopian that revolves around a complete government controlled world, bye bye democracy.  Floods destroyed the United States and the military took over, but not everyone agreed with how they did things.  They U.S. separated into the “Republic”, “The Patriots”, and “The Colonies”.  The Republic is the West Coast and our story takes place in Los Angeles California.

June is the perfect soldier with a reckless streak, who got a perfect score on the test that dictates her place in society. Daniel aka Day failed the test and is the Republic’s most wanted criminal, and is now wanted for killing June’s brother.  Wanting her revenge, June agrees to track down Day, and bring him in to be arrested.  Day just wants to rescue his brother Eden, who was taken away by the government because he has the plague.  June goes undercover pretending to be one of the people living on streets, and happens to be rescued by Day and his friend Tess when she gets caught in a fight.  Day and June are attracted to each other and June has doubts that Day is responsible for her brother’s death, especially since Day usually doesn’t kill people.  He is still taken into custody and begins to have suspicion that the plague was orchestrated by the Republic.  June does too, and learns that her brother had been investigating the Republic as well.  June must decide if she’s going to betray her government and or is she going to let them execute Day.

Legend is a pretty good read, written in present tense, first person, and goes back and forth between June and Day. This writing style fits the rhythm of the plot nicely as it is fast paced and very intense, and it makes sense that we get two personal points of view. Having two different protagonists and perspectives helps make this different from other Dystopians too.  Most books in this genre are about one protagonist and told only from that perspective, though The Divergent series had two perspectives in the last book Allegiant, but only in the last book. The juxtaposition of these very different characters helps make it a different kind of Dystopian. Usually, Dystopians have an aspect that makes their story different from the others, and in this case, the take-over is more military based, rather than suits and scientists.  The characters and plots are cliché to genre of fiction, which takes some points off of it, but it is still entertaining to read.  It is difficult to make it unique, because the point of the genre is that the government is corrupt and the people intend to rebel.  Most Dystopians have characters like June and Day, who are naïve to the government’s problems or are too aware of the problems. A thing that makes this book visually pleasing, and continues through the rest of the trilogy, is color that is used not only on the cover, but the writings of Day’s chapters are the same color as the cover image.  Most books are written in black ink, making this a visually unique book.  Another physical appeal is the cover has a simple, single image, a symbol.   Like I said, the book is a good start to the trilogy and enjoyable, and I would give a B minus.