Review: Champion by Marie Lu (Legend #3)

As the final installment in the Legend series, Champion picks up eight months after the end of Prodigy. Day and June have gone their separate ways; he is fighting a detrimental illness and she is a rising politician, one of the three Princeps-Elects (check spelling). Trouble is stirring in the Colonies, where there is an unknown and rapidly spreading plague. The Colonies are accusing the Republic of launching this plague as a war weapon, and they haven given the Republic an ultimatum to either find a cure for the plague or to launch an all out war.

June and the Elector, Anden, are both of the belief that Day's younger brother, Eden, is the plague’s patient zero. In order to come up with a cure, they will need to experiment on Eden. June is certain that Day will refuse to let his brother be used, but she makes the request regardless. This request is the only reason that the two of them are reunited at all.

I have to admit: both characters frustrated me immensely in this one. They're both so skittish, so proud, too proud, in fact, to admit how much they care about each other and yearn to be together. This is so frustrating it's almost painful to read. Perhaps it's so obvious to us readers because we are inside both June and Day's heads, but it seems like it should be obvious to them (and everyone else) also. I don't want to spout any sort of relationship advice or anything, but it would have been just great had one of them broken their pride and been the bigger person.

This is not to say that I have grown to dislike June or Day. There are just fewer special moments between the two of them that make all that waiting worthwhile. I still love them and still root for them. At times it just seems that their love is ill fated and will inevitably go wrong. Hence my frustration.

There are fewer love triangles in Champion than there were in Prodigy, which I am a fan of, as always. Tess is no longer tempting Day, and June's attraction to Anden seems somewhat faded. In all actuality, it feels like there are no functional relationships in this book.

Luckily, however, there is so much more to the Legend series than the romance aspect. Nearly every page of Champion is packed with incessant and thrilling action. It's one of those hold your breath while you read books, and there's so little downtime to actually recover from it.

And the world has blossomed. It is so intricate; everything-from the map at the front to the detailed point structure in Antarctica to the lake in Los Angeles from the rising ocean-is carefully and purposefully plotted out. This is the first YA dystopia where I have not found a fictional history riddled with holes. Although certain things feel a little farfetched, they also seem completely plausible.

One of my favorite chapters consists of June's visit to Ross City, Antarctica. The entire book is written with great imagery, but this trip to Antarctica is particularly powerful. Though it's unlike anything I've every seen or read, it is so remarkably easy to picture the towering skyscrapers connected by bridges, the floating levels over every person, and the detailed technology that transcends anything we’ve ever known. It sounds like a video game; in fact, I hope it becomes one.

I was a little disappointed we finally learn what year this all takes place in... It had been nice to imagine this world as some obscure, unknown point in the future. But at least it’s actually far enough ahead for all these advancements to be credible.

Marie Lu does an impeccable job of building momentum. Every chapter builds on the one preceding it; everything is relevant; there are no wasted pages or words. I guess I should mention that my frustration with June and Day is a good kind of frustration. As in, it means I care about them and the decisions they make, as if they are real people rather than characters in a book.

To avoid spoilers, I’m going to omit most of my feelings about the outcome of this series. I will say that I cried harder than I have for a while. I will say that the ending is a bit disappointing, but that it also fits with the characters. I will say I’m glad to get a peek into their future… But that’s all; perhaps I’ve said too much.

All in all, this has transformed into my favorite YA series, and I’m so terribly sad to see it end.

Review: Prodigy by Marie Lu (Legend #2)

I am absolutely delighted to have found a series that enraptures me so thoroughly. Usually, I find myself loving the first book in a series and either feeling indifference or disdain for the latter books, but Prodigy has thoroughly proven that this will not be the case for the Legend series.

I will admit that the story did start off a little slow for me. It shouldn't have, considering it picks right back up where Legend ends, but I guess there's always that awkward phase before a book truly blooms into itself. It doesn't take long to do that, to turn into something wonderful that is LIKE Legend but is also just like itself.

In the beginning, June and Day have traveled a long way in search of the Patriots. Day's leg was brutally wounded in Legend and they are now desperately seeking out medical help, even though they have no means of paying. Turns out, the Patriots' preferred method of payment is for both June and Day to aide in the assassination of the new Elector, The Republic's supreme leader.

June's job is to win him over, to use his obvious attraction to her as a strength and to lead him right into the Patriots' trap. Day's job is to act as a social icon, to grow in fame and seek out the public's support for the Patriots' cause. Throughout all this, both characters are exposed to a great deal of danger and are lead to ask questions concerning right and wrong, innocence and guilt, truth and lies.

That's one of the things I love about this book: the shadowy gray area that neither corroborates nor condemns any one character or movement. You think you know whom to trust, you think you know what is going to be right, but you can never truly follow your instincts in this one. I made my own assumptions, but I didn't prove or disprove them until the very end. And perhaps I still haven't, seeing how the story continues in Champion.  

The main characters themselves also live in the gray area, even as they gain so much depth throughout Prodigy. I loved both June and Day in Legend, but here they feel like such real, rounded out people with equal parts hope and fear, equal parts benevolence and resentment. Perhaps the reason they achieve that depth is because of the decisions they are forced to make throughout the story. They continue to show their true colors under pressure, such as June's refusal to go against her convictions and Day's refusal to go against June.

Can I just say that this is a great love story? The problem with love stories is that they are usually so overdone or so over the top, but this isn't the case here at all. Perhaps I'm too in love with this world to speak about it rationally, but I found myself rooting for the two of them, cheering them on, and then dying inside when they couldn't be together, and further on hating Tess for her part in taking Day away from June.

Literally, my only problem with the June and Day dynamic is that they feel so much older than fifteen. But then, I guess that's why he's a legend and she's a prodigy...

All the other characters are well rounded too. I disliked Tess, but that's only because of her attempts to seduce Day. I did not, however, dislike Anden, despite his obvious attraction to June. He is rather admirable (at least at this point) for his ambitions to turn his country around even though it is the opposite of what his politicians want.

That's another thing I like about this novel: how political it is. At least it seems political for YA. The fact that the present politics are so well thought out and mentioned consistently leads me to the conclusion that this is a good dystopia. Seriously, I oftentimes dislike when dystopias try to explain away how the world came to be in it sorry state. If it's going to be a poor explanation, I'd prefer there be no explanation at all and to let me just enjoy the world as it is. There were moments early on in Prodigy where I was dreading the upcoming explanations, particularly when they talked about the technological advancements of Antarctica.

But it turns out this world was very well planned-politics, history, and culture all included. Marie Lu definitely doesn't launch into heavy explanations, but she presents her world with such consistency that you really wouldn't dare to question it.

Review: Armada by Ernest Cline

The best word that comes to mind to describe this book is "disappointing." It has such an interesting premise and such PROMISE that I was looking forward to reading it for months. The result of all that waiting was slugging through one of the most boring books I've ever read.

Thing is, it should not be boring. It's an apocalypse book-which by default is right up my alleyway. On top of that, it's about aliens. On TOP OF THAT, it's about a government conspiracy that uses video games to train everyday people (including children) as soldiers. I love all of these things. I should have liked the book.

And yet... and yet...

Zack Lightman is a senior in high school, part time student and full time gamer. From the way he talks, it's as if he has spent all of his life researching anything and everything to do with nerdom. Not only does he know about every video game ever created, he knows about the history, the creator, the tie-ins to other video games. And not only does he know this, he knows every SciFi movie, every director, every actor, every book, every scientist... I’m not exaggerating when I say he knows everything.

Zack has been obsessed with his father for most of his life, as he "died" when Zack was very young. This doesn't seem odd in and of itself, but, as I reader, I never actually believed his father was dead, and was therefore unsurprised when he turns out to have been alive the whole time. (This is revealed fairly early on in the book so is not really a spoiler.) Maybe I'm alone in thinking this, but the infatuation he feels for both of his parents is, well, sort of creepy. Particularly with his mother. It's almost like he has an Oedipal Complex.

Zack thinks he is crazy when he sees an aircraft from his favorite video game flying by his school. When he returns home, he unearths his father's old journals that contain lists of games, movies, and books that lead him to the conclusion the government has been preparing civilians for alien existence for decades.

Shortly after all that, he's picked up from the same Armada ship he saw flying past his school. After a few side trips where he meets his love interest, Lex, and gets a briefing on the history of alien interaction, he ends up on the dark side of the moon with his father and several other... accomplished pilots (the highest ranked Armada players).

And then the war happens.

And then it ends.

That's basically how I felt while reading it. It just happens. Everything just happens.

To be fair, I think I began resenting this book by the end of the first chapter. At first, I was rather impressed by all his intricate and esoteric knowledge of pop culture, but it quickly got old. Many of the references are generic enough to where most people will understand them (at least people of a certain age or of a certain social group), but there are just so many references. The beginning of Zack's story is packed with allegories and metaphors that somehow all pertain to his obsession with anything SciFi.

So after all that got old for me, I sort of tuned everything out. More or less, I began skimming. I only kept reading for the hope that something exciting would happen (well, something exciting that FELT exciting, I should say). But that never happened for me. I never liked the characters, the plot, or even the moral of the story. I only finished it at all because I am an obsessive-compulsive reader and could not abandon something I had been looking forward to for so long.

But this feels as if it's written in real time, sort of like a never-ending story. The whole book takes place over a span of two fictional days, but it took me longer than that to read it.

This review is coming from someone who likes SciFi. This is coming from someone who adores aliens and graphic novels, who games and reads apocalypse lit. But, this is my advice: do not read this book unless nerdom is your life. Even then, I cannot guarantee you will like it. I personally do not think this book is suited for anyone just looking for a good alien/gaming adventure. It's not written for people that are not a part of this world; as in, it's not meant for people that have no interest in games or meticulous nerd history.