Adelina Amouteru is a maimed survivor of a blood fever that
wiped out multitudes of adults and left even more children scarred. From this
fever has risen a group called the Young Elites, marked young people with
supernatural abilities born from their illnesses.
Adelina herself lost her mother and an eye to the sickness.
For years, she has lived in fear of her hateful and volatile father who favors
her beautiful and perfect sister, Violetta. When Adelina overhears her father
making a bargain to sell her, she flees for her life and ends up killing her
father with powers she did not know she possessed.
As always, I am blown away by the intricate world Marie Lu
has woven together. I'm particularly impressed with this world because it is
entirely original (or at least as original as a fictional world can be). Unlike
Legend, which is dystopia, a future
version of the world its readers live in, the world in The Young Elites has its own countries, creatures, races,
religions, and even illnesses. I personally loved how detached from the reality
this book is. It's been a long time since I've read a good fantasy. Every word
and sentence in this book feels well thought out; it all seems to matter.
Not to mention how likable I find Adelina to be. For writers
it's a difficult job to make a precocious character relatable to his or her
audience. Much of the time they come across as pompous or holier-than-thou or
just plain better, but Adelina seems
like a very real person with a whole lot of reasons to give into the darkness
that makes up her character.
And can I just add her darkness is fabulous? You don't often
find this kind of legitimate dark emotion, especially not in YA. Despite the
fact that it's fantasy, this sort of emotion is REAL, while so much else seems forced or insincere. There are some
incredibly powerful scenes where Adelina is struggling with herself, half of
her thrilling at her ability to make the world suffer and the other half
lamenting over who she is becoming. I am ecstatic to find out in later books
whether her powers seize control over her or if she will learn to tame them
into submission.
One thing I do not
like is the flipping back and forth between perspectives. I am very picky about
this sort of thing anyway, but, since most of the book is told by Adelina, the
other POVs seem unnecessary and honestly a little... inconsistent. The fact
that other perspectives appear so infrequently makes them feel like a cop out;
it's like those breaks exist only to
tell the reader something that they couldn't learn from Adelina. This is fine,
but I would have preferred either the whole story be told by Adelina or for it
to have been broken up more steadily throughout AND for there to be consistency regarding first person and third
person voice...
This is not to say that the other characters are not good or
well rounded. In fact, I like most of them pretty well. There are a few who I
do not care for-like Dante and Terren. This is not because they are bad
characters (bad meaning "villainous"), but because they seem less
complicated than the others. Dante never once wavers from whom I initially
thought he would turn out to be. For that matter, neither does Terren. I have
read plenty of reviews that say he turns out to be double-sided and deeper than
he initially seems to be, but it never quite feels that way for me. He's also
just the same character I thought he'd be.
Now Enzo... He's fantastic-dark and dangerous and
complicated. The romance with him is subtle, but it's also filled with
insatiable tension and holds the potential for so much more.
Marie Lu has singlehandedly changed my mind about series.
Until this year, I had a love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with them and I
just could not fathom how so many authors stretch a book limp over the course
of three or more books when it could have been a perfectly good standalone.
However, Legend and now The Young Elites are proving to me what
a good series is: fantastic world development, intricate characters, and
intoxicating romance.
Though I did not find this book to be quite as compelling as the
Legend series, I am still anxious and excited to see what is waiting in The Rose Society.
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