Leg­end, I have to admit, let me down. I’ve been wait­ing to read it since I first heard about Marie Lu’s dystopian months ago and while it’s def­i­nitely a page turner, it wasn’t as great as I’d hoped it would be. I’ve heard there’s already a film in the works and I can see why. Leg­end feels, and reads, like an action movie. Lots of fight scenes, your basic dystopian plot, but lack­ing that cer­tain some­thing that makes it really great.

What was once the west­ern United States is now home to the Repub­lic, a nation per­pet­u­ally at war with its neigh­bors. Born into an elite fam­ily in one of the Republic’s wealth­i­est dis­tricts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for suc­cess in the Republic’s high­est mil­i­tary cir­cles. Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country’s most wanted crim­i­nal. But his motives may not be as mali­cious as they seem.

From very dif­fer­ent worlds, June and Day have no rea­son to cross paths — until the day June’s brother, Metias, is mur­dered and Day becomes the prime sus­pect. Caught in the ulti­mate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family’s sur­vival, while June seeks to avenge Metias’s death. But in a shock­ing turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sin­is­ter lengths their coun­try will go to keep its secrets.

That’s not to say this is a bad book. Leg­end is enter­tain­ing and well-written, a fast read, with plenty of action to keep the story pro­gress­ing nicely, but there’s also noth­ing that makes it stand out. It doesn’t help that Leg­end is a lit­tle too vague on the details. At 300 pages Leg­end feels slight and while Lu hints at gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cies, and pos­si­ble sci­en­tific exper­i­ments, the reader isn’t given much to go on. Why has the US been split into the Repub­lic and the Colonies? Why are they at war with each other? What are they fight­ing for? Who exactly are the Patri­ots and what are their goals? Leg­end needed more back­ground and ground­work. It doesn’t read like bad world build­ing, more that a lot of infor­ma­tion is being held back for the next install­ment, when the first book could have done with being fleshed out more.

June and Day are lik­able char­ac­ters but are also pretty for­get­table. Both are child prodigies, which I did roll my eyes at. Their exploits bor­dered on the ridicu­lous at times, Day’s in par­tic­u­lar. Bring able to scale walls, out­wit and take out highly trained sol­dier after sol­dier, rob­bing banks in record time, with a dam­aged knee? Pro­moted early into the mil­i­tary and entrusted to inde­pen­dently bring in the most wanted crim­i­nal in the Repub­lic, despite being a trou­ble maker with a known dis­re­gard for the rules? It was a bit over the top. Unsur­pris­ing, nei­ther June or Day sounded 15. If the story hadn’t men­tioned their age, I would have put them at least 3 years older. I didn’t feel I was read­ing about two kids, one fight­ing for their own and their fam­i­lies sur­vival, the other strug­gling to earn her place along­side her brother in a total­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ment. How­ever, Lu does earn my respect and grat­i­tude for not jump­ing on the ‘insta-love’ band­wagon. I actu­ally felt the romance between June and Day was only there because it was expected, I didn’t see much of a con­nec­tion or bond between the two of them, but since any attrac­tion was kept very low key and never over­shad­owed the main focus of the story, the lack of chem­istry between the two didn’t bother me as it nor­mally would have done. I do wish their friend­ship had been devel­oped fur­ther. June and Day risk them­selves for one another fairly quickly, with­out much of a rea­son why.

Leg­end is told from two nar­ra­tive view points. I pre­ferred June’s chap­ters, as we see her orig­i­nal igno­rance and dis­dain towards the lower classes waver as she starts to ques­tion and even­tu­ally dis­trust the Repub­lic. Her char­ac­ter arc is one of the most inter­est­ing aspects of Leg­end, though I do think it would have had a big­ger impact had it hap­pened grad­u­ally over sev­eral books. Day was less inter­est­ing. His nar­ra­tive con­sisted of pretty much the same thing through­out, no mat­ter what was hap­pen­ing. I wasn’t bored while read­ing Day’s chap­ters but by the end I also didn’t feel I had much of a sense of who he was. June is def­i­nitely the stronger char­ac­ter of the two, but it was actu­ally Metias who I was drawn to, who had secrets of his own and I hope we get to hear his story in the future books.

Leg­end lacks sub­tlety, is fairly predictable, nor does it explore any social issues in any real depth, but it has an energy to it and is a fun, light, fast-paced story. The char­ac­ters and the back­ground needed to be fleshed out a lit­tle more, but aside from a poor plot-line where a blog con­ve­niently reveals every­thing, Leg­end was well put together. It was refresh­ing to read a YA dystopian from a guy’s point of view and I think it is one of the few really pop­u­lar dystopi­ans released this year that will appeal to both sexes. I think younger read­ers in par­tic­u­lar will love it and Leg­end is cer­tainly well worth a read if you are a fan of the genre, old or young.