Today I will be reviewing the Young Elites trilogy, so it looks like I will be reviewing all nine of Marie Lu’s books this year. My review for Wildcard will come out September 18th or 19th, and I’ll probably end up reviewing her Batman: Nightwalker book in September as well. Like my review of the Legend trilogy last month, I will review all three books at once.
The Young Elites trilogy is comprised of three books: The Young Elites, The Rose Society, and The Midnight Star. I like the second two books better than the first book of the trilogy; in fact, I currently have two Young Elites related fanfics in progress, and they are more influenced by the second two books.
The three books follow the story of Adelina Amouteru. As a child, she caught the blood fever and one of her eyes become infected and had to be burned out, leaving a scar. She also was marked with silver hair. Although she was still pretty, her scar left her marked: she was a malfetto.
Many people who caught the blood fever as children survived with marks of various types and lived as malfettos. People hated and feared them. Adults who caught the blood fever died.
Some children who got the blood fever eventually discovered that they had supernatural powers. These people became known as The Young Elites.
The blood fever also infected her sister Violetta, who survived and remained unmarked. Violetta remained pretty, and was the favorite of their father. Over time, Adelina became resentful and bitter towards her sister.
Until one night, her father decided to sell her to a wealthy merchant… as a mistress.
Adelina wasn’t having that. She decided to escape instead. In the process of escaping, she accidentally killed her father — and discovered that she had the power to conjure up illusions. She was an Elite.
She is taken in by a group of Elites known as The Dagger Society. They taught her how to use her powers. She falls in love with the leader of The Dagger Society. While all this was happening, she discovers that she is trapped into making impossible choices. She doesn’t know who to trust, and we are led along through all three books.
Themes
Trust and rejection are a huge part of this story. Adelina feels like she is rejected by everybody in her life. Society rejects her for being a malfetto. She’s rejected by her father. She feels like she is rejected by her sister. Then, she is rejected some more. The more she faces rejection, the more bitter and dark her soul becomes. When she achieves power over others, she takes it out on them. She becomes one of those wicked people that you read about as the villains in many other stories. Yet… you don’t wish ill for her.
Another theme in this story seems to be about mental illness. As Adelina becomes more powerful, she starts seeing hallucinations and has nightmares. If she existed in the 21st century and not in a fantasy novel, we would say that she had a mental illness. Her hallucinations only contribute to the darkness in her heart, until it almost seems impossible for her to crawl out of this dark hole that she’s dug for herself. My theory on this trilogy is… that she would never have been able to crawl out of this hole on her own.
But, never fear, that is not the end of her story. A third theme of this story is unconditional love. There are people that love Adelina for who she is and not what she can do for them. These are the people that finally help her redeem herself in the bittersweet end.
Setting
I love the setting for this book. The world is a fantasy, medieval-type world (quite unlike Legend, which is a future dystopian setting). Each part of the world has a different flavor to it. The world that Adelina is born into seems to have the flavor of Italy, and in particular, Venice. The northern part of the world reminds me of the Celts. In the South, where Adelina’s ancestors hail from, the world seems like medieval Persia.
I felt that this was a really clever way to set up the world. In my Young Elites WIP, Saving Adelinetta, I’ll be extending on the theme of her settings; but I still have about 1/3 of the first draft to do, and it’s going to need a lot of editing, so who knows when I will finish it.
Overall
This is one of my favorite stories. In order to write fanfiction, I have to spend a lot of time reading the original books, getting into the character’s heads, and studying what the story is trying to say. I’ve only written for four fandoms, and this is one of them. The Young Elites trilogy is good enough for me to want to live in these character’s heads and reread the books enough to write fanfics based on it. I think that’s enough of an endorsement to say that I really like it.
I’m SO glad you loved this trilogy so much! I really enjoyed the first, but confession: I haven’t read the next books yet. D: I guess it’s a bit different than what I usually like? I mean, I binge-read the Legend trilogy and loved it, and I’m eagerly awaiting Wildcard since I loved Warcross. I really DID like The Young Elites though, so I really should read the sequels some time. 🙂
Aimee (Aimee, Always) recently posted…Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik: Pretty Much Just Brilliance and Awesomeness Mixed Together
You might want to give the second book a try, especially since you actually do like Medieval fantasy books like Spinning Silver. One of my favorite characters from this series only makes a cameo appearance in book 1.
The books came out in Spanish in May, and I’m thinking about getting the second two in Spanish, but not the first (I read books in Spanish to practice), mostly because I think the second two books have more rereadability.