Legend Archives - Brooke's Reviews and Sweeps

Legend (The Graphic Novel) Is Adorable!

By Brookelorren on March 14, 2019March 11, 20192 Comments

One of my Christmas presents to myself last year (with my gift card money) was getting a copy of the Legend graphic novels. I’m not really a graphic novel reader, but these were so adorable that I couldn’t pass them up. Besides, as a book reviewer, I’m starting to try new things.

Legend (in case you haven’t read the original novel) is the story of Day, who grew up in a poor family, and June, who grew up in a wealthy family, in the dystopian future country, The Republic. Fun fact: Day is related to Asher Wing from Warcross. Anyway, after June’s brother Metais dies, she goes to look for who she thinks is the killer. Things aren’t exactly as she thinks they are, and they end up on an adventure together.

The first thing that I notice about this book is that it’s adorable. The first few pages show 10-year-old Daniel (Day is a nickname) taking his trial, which is used to determine things like what high school (if any) you get into. 10-year-old Daniel is just so adorable you want to reach into the book and give him a hug, especially when you find out what happens to him.

Most of the book happens after they both turn 15 in this book. Legend the Graphic Novel follows he original storyline fairly accurately, although the order the story is told in had to be altered a bit to fit the format, there is less detail, and it’s not told form the 1st person perspectives of Day and June like the original novels.

One of the things that I appreciate about Legend the Graphic Novel is that it gets a lot of details from the book correct (unlike some movies that I’ve seen of popular movies ::cough cough Divergent::). The hair and eye colors seem accurate, most of the clothing seems accurate; even Kaede’s vine tattoo is correct. As someone who has written Legend fanfiction and strives to make sure I get the details correct, I appreciate that the graphic novel was done so well.

The fourth Legend book, Rebel, is coming out this fall. If you don’t have time to reread the original series and want to review everything before you read it, you might want to try Legend the graphic novel. It doesn’t take that long to read, goes over all the major details, and is cute on top of that. Happy reading!

Fangirling On Friday — On Sunday!

By Brookelorren on January 13, 2019January 13, 20194 Comments

Yesterday on Twitter I saw that Books in The Sky was starting a new weekly prompt: Fangirling on Friday. It sounded like a lot of fun, and I typically don’t post anything on Fridays, so I figured I’d try it out. I think her first prompt was from last Friday, so I decided to jump in — on a Sunday!

This week’s prompt was Fandoms, so I decided to start with my favorite fandoms: Book Fandoms I have Written Fanction For. Writing fanfiction takes a lot of effort, so there has to be a reason for it. Even reading fanfiction takes time from all of the other amazing books out there. So these are kind of in order from my earliest fandom favorites to last month.

The first two novels I ever wrote were band fanfics (that’s why I’m narrowing this topic to book fandoms). It took me a year to write both books. Then I stopped writing for a long time, as I went to college and got busy in other things.

But then I read Divergent. Probably the first book series I really fangirled over. I got to about page 50 in this book, and then… I read the rest of this book, Insurgent, and Allegiant in two days. I remember going to bed crying and heartbroken at 4 AM.

But at the same time, I thought “this is fiction. I’m not going to take this ending.” So the next day, I discovered fanfiction. I didn’t start writing it right away… and I really have to admit, I’m not very impressed by my first effort now. But my recent Divergent fusion fanfic with the next fandom turned out okay…

If we magically teleport forward to 2016, we’ll find the Legend fandom, which I’ve written the most fanfiction for to-date. My husband had to go to the hospital one evening (fairly routine for us because of his sickle cell anemia) and I had just reread Legend, and I thought, “what did happen to Day and June after Champion?” This was before Life after Legend or the Legend 4 announcement. I didn’t want to leave it at that, so I wrote my first Legend fanfic and… didn’t finish it. I only wrote 14 chapters.

Never fear, I got a note last February from someone who wanted to read the end of my story. I was missing writing by then, so I finished it. And I started writing more stories, in multiple fandoms. Which led to me starting my first original novel for last NaNoWriMo.

I write fanfiction because I want to tell a story about the existing characters that I already love. I fell in love with Adelina and Magiano. They’re so sweet together! After I read the ending to The Midnight Star, I didn’t want to leave it at that, but I saw a glimmer of hope at the end. So I started writing Saving Adelinetta. It’s on haitus at the moment, but so far it’s at over 68,000 words, and I have about 1/3 of the book left to write.

I also have a cute little modern-day AU that I set aside for NaNoWriMo where Adelina and Magiano meet over World of Warcraft. I was originally planning on a longer work, but I think this will make a cute short story. I can always write a sequel later. As a short story, I might be able to get this out in a month-ish. My non-fanfic work is taking priority though.

I just love Akos and Cyra from Carve the Mark! They’re perfect for each other. I was a little wary of The Fates Divide, especially with the tagline “He’d Die for Her, She’d Kill for Him” but I was pleasantly surprised about that end. So… I never felt the need to write a long novel or novella about these two, but I did write a very short story (only 618 words) about what happens to these two about five years after the end of the story. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I have to write more about their story, but you never know. I get ideas from the strangest of places.

The last story I’ve actually written was a strange combination of fandoms that I’ve never written about before: Clary and Jace from the Mortal Instruments run into Brenna and Patrick from Brenna Morgan and the Iron Key while they are being chased by a demon. Clary, thinking that she’s going to get them to someplace safe and planning on getting backup, accidentally teleports them to the universe of the story that I’m writing. And then they have to find their way home.

I’m not really comfortable writing much Shadowhunter’s fanfiction yet. There is so much to that universe, and I try to be very detail oriented with my fanfiction, so I haven’t written anything else yet. Although I do like to read Shadowhunter’s fanfiction.

The final fandom that I love enough to write fanfiction about is Warcross… kind of. I loved this duology, and I have nothing more to say about this particular story at the moment… however…

Marie Lu said that Asher Wing is related to Daniel Wing from Legend. That got me thinking: “how did the Wing family go from Asher being this mega superstar to Daniel’s family being dirt poor?” And “Why is June named June when she was born in July?” So, although I haven’t written a word to this story yet, I’ve been kicking around this story, about Asher’s grandchildren/Day and June’s grandparents (different sets of grandparents… I’m not going to make them inbreeding cousins or anything) that answers these questions. It’s going to be mostly original characters with cameo appearances from some people from Warcross.

So that’s it! Fandoms I fangirl over so much I write/read fanfiction of them! On Friday (no, I don’t plan on making the Sunday edition a thing) I plan on writing about Dragons!

MORE Amazing Marie Lu News!

By Brookelorren on October 13, 2018October 13, 20182 Comments

It seems like every time I get major Marie Lu news that I can’t wait to share with everybody, I’m at work. I spend my 15 minute breaks on Twitter; that’s when I see them. I knew Marie Lu had some news to share with us either this week or next, but I couldn’t imagine that she was going to write a FOURTH book to Legend! I’m so excited!

Oh, and it’s supposed to come out NEXT FALL! I was a little disappointed last month when Ms. Lu said that Kingdom of Back wouldn’t be coming out until 2020. Goodreads had been saying it was a 2019 release, so I figured I had over a year to wait for a new book from her. This might be why there was the delay. I do have some short stories to read (I plan on reviewing the Slasher Girls and Monster Boys anthology later this month, which has a story by her in it), but we get a whole new book next year. Yay!

Oh, and that’s not the ONLY good news today! She will have another book called Skyhunter coming out! It looks like Skyhunter is going to be a duology.

There is an article about the deal in the Washington Post.

So this last 30 days has been an AMAZING reading month for me. Not only have I read some of the best books this year (Wildcard, Enchantée, Muse of Nightmares, more Mortal Instruments books), I get this news. When I read this on my last break, I practically floated through the last hour of work! And of course whenever anybody asked how I was, I told them “outstanding!” or some other thesaurus variant of the word. If they asked why I was doing so well, I told them about the book, LOL.

Have a wonderful day!

Wonderful Legend News!

By Brookelorren on July 27, 2018July 27, 20182 Comments

If you read this book for nearly any length of time at all, then you’ll discover that I love Legend, and Marie Lu’s books in general. I’ve probably mentioned at least one of her books every week that I’ve been active on this blog. Well, today I heard some WONDERFUL Legend news while I was on my break at work. There is still a chance that there will be a Legend movie!

I’m certainly not an expert on how all this works, but from what I understand, a movie studio initially buys the rights to a movie for a certain period of time. At that point, they can either make the movie… or not. CBS Films originally bought the rights to the Legend movie, but nothing ever came from it. BCDF Pictures now has the rights to the movie. So evidently, there is still enough interest for this to potentially happen.

I so hope this happens. This is a wonderful book and a movie would allow more people to hear about it. I had never heard of Divergent until I saw the movie trailer… and the book is so much better than the movie. The Legend fanfiction category over at AO3 is getting a little lonely.

That leads me to the other Legendy part of my day. It really was a great day for me. I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo this year, with a goal of 20,000 words. I also decided to do a fun little (okay, little is a little bit of a misnomer) challenge over at the Archive of Our Own Writers Group over on Facebook. They had a little game called “fandom roulette” where they would roll a specific type of story for me to write. I was challenged to write a gen fusion fic in my current fandom.

Gen fics are those that don’t have a love relationship, fusion fics are those where characters are written into another fandom as if they’ve always been there. So for my challenge (and Camp NaNoWriMo) I wrote a story where Day and June are born in the Divergent world and they both end up joining Dauntless. On Tuesday night, I won Camp NaNoWriMo with this story, My New Best Friend.

I published chapter 1 on Wednesday morning. Within 24 hours, I had 50 hits. I have absolutely no idea where all those hits came from. As a comparison, my most successful Legend fanfic, Like Normal People, only has gotten 757 hits in 2 1/2 years. The story with my most hits ever is Selfless, which is in the Divergent fandom, and it has a grand total of 2357 hits, but that story is almost 3 1/2 years old.

So today was a wonderful day, with both the movie news and my fanfic doing so well. It made my day at work seem to fly by, I was so happy. Hopefully, if you like Legend as well, the exciting movie news will actually result in some sort of movie!

Legend is One of My Favorite YA Trilogies

By Brookelorren on June 28, 2018June 21, 20187 Comments

Last week I wrote about Marie Lu’s latest book, Warcross; today I’m writing about her debut trilogy, Legend. The series consists of three books: Legend, Prodigy, and Champion. If you haven’t read them yet, you are missing out. Go read them right now. I’ve read them several times myself, and I love this universe so much that I have published three fanfics about it on Archive of Our Own (with a fourth sitting unfinished on my desktop). Since this is a completed trilogy that I’m not reading for the first time, I’m reviewing the trilogy as a whole, and not the books as separate entities.

Plot

The story begins on November 28, 2031 (which is a Wednesday, in case you’re curious). Legend begins with the memorable line “My mother thinks I’m dead,” which immediately hooks you into the story. Daniel Wing, now known as the notorious criminal “Day”, is hanging out with his best friend Tess. They both live on the streets, eking out a living as best as they can. The plague patrols are coming through, and Day is watching his family’s house, worried that his family might be sick. It turns out, his younger brother Eden does have the plague. Being the loving brother that he is, Daniel breaks into the hospital in order to try to steal some plague cure, setting off a chain of events that will change his life (and the country) forever.

June (our other protagonist) is a brilliant girl in her final year at the military academy. She doesn’t fit in with the rest of her classmates because over the course of her childhood, she’s skipped several grades, and everyone around her is older than she is. Her family is also about as wealthy as Day’s family is impoverished. When tragedy strikes her family, she is sent to track down the person responsible. In the process, she ends up meeting Day, and they develop a relationship with each other.

The trilogy deals with political corruption, deception, love, and war. It deals with the problems caused by class disparities when the privileged aren’t aware of the plight of those that are less fortunate than them (while I was reading Never Stop Walking, I thought about this story and how there are people living lives similar to what Day had, except in reality, not fiction). If I go into too much detail, I’ll give away spoilers, but there is a lot going on in this story; you’ll just have to read it until its exciting conclusion.

Characters

The story is told from Day and June’s points of view. These two characters (as well as the supporting characters) make the story come alive. Day is street smart and agile, able to climb buildings in a single bound (okay, that’s a little of an exaggeration). He suffers from a few physical problems (courtesy of the government), and when his world intersects with June’s, the cultural differences can cause a few problems. June is wealthy and wickedly smart. She has an almost obsessive-compulsive fixation on time and minute details (which is why I can tell you when the story begins, even though the book never outright states it). She’s a good fighter, and her attitude can sometimes get her into trouble.

The supporting characters are also great. Tess, Day’s best friend, is a caring healer. Metias, June’s older brother, teaches June not to judge people just by their life’s circumstances. Thomas, Metias’s friend, is a soldier that is blindly loyal to the government. Joining them is a whole host of other characters.

Themes

The Legend trilogy has many themes underlying the story, which is one of the things that makes it so enduringly lovely. It speaks of sacrificing your own wishes because of your love for other people. It speaks of not holding someone in judgement just because they’re not as well off as you. It speaks about how blind loyalty to a cause can be dangerous.

I guess that one of the themes in this story can be summed up by these two lines of dialogue between June and another character:

“I will die with honor for sacrificing everything — everything — for my country. And yet, Day is the legend, while I am to be executed.”

June’s response to his confusion about why Day, a criminal, was being held up as a good guy, and why the other character was being sentenced to death for following orders, was “Because Day chose to walk in the light.”

One Final Note

Legend has a very… complex… ending. It’s not a story where the ending leaves you seeing flowers and rainbows and puppies and kittens, but it’s also not an ending that leaves you crying as you crawl into bed at 4 in the morning (yes, I’m still talking about you, chapter 50 of Allegiant!). When I initially reviewed Champion on Goodreads, I gave it four stars. I have since upgraded my review to five stars, because the ending grew on me a little (it helps that I write fanfiction in this fandom). After reading the ending, I wanted more, which is why I chose to create more on my own. I didn’t want to let the story go as it was.

If you like dystopian YA stories and haven’t read this one yet, you’ll want to read these. All three of them. I absolutely love this trilogy, and I think you will too.