Review: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

I’ve been deliberately avoiding Arthurian reworkings for the last year or so, while I’ve been furiously redrafting my WIP (multiple times) but now it’s in a drawer, I knew it was time I finally got around to reading Legendborn!

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SOME LEGACIES ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN.

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants to escape. A residential programme for bright high-schoolers seems like the perfect opportunity - until she witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus . . .

A flying demon feeding on human energies.

A secret society of so-called "Legendborn" that hunt the creatures down.

A mysterious mage who calls himself a "Merlin" and who attempts - and fails - to wipe Bree's memory of everything she saw.

The mage's failure unlocks Bree's own unique magic and a buried memory about her mother. Now Bree will do whatever it takes to discover the truth, even infiltrate the Legendborn. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur's knights and foretell a magical war, Bree must decide how far she'll go for the truth. Should she use her magic to take the society down - or join the fight?

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This book blew my mind. Going in, I wasn’t feeling too optimistic, despite the fact that I’d only seen glowing reviews of this book. I’ve always struggled with fantasy novels that are set in the modern day but try to include things that, in my head, fit the typical ‘medieval’ setting better. It’s one of the reasons that I DNF’d Talon last year. Dragons, yes. On a beach in California? Nope.

But Legendborn has inexplicably managed to fuse the two in a way I genuinely really loved. I think the fact that the university has a ‘secret society’, and that’s almost the ‘gateway’ in to the magical world worked well. I liked the fact that the reality of Bree’s classes and work seemed to slip to one side while plot-based shenanigans happened. I really liked the sense of camaraderie between the characters that gave me the vibes of some of my favourite non-modern fantasy novels.

The way the Arthurian legends were intertwined with the modern day was really well done. While I wouldn’t profess to be an expert on the subject, I’d say I probably came to this with a bit more knowledge of the myths and legends than perhaps your average reader, and I think that really benefitted me - although it did make me wonder how accessible the world-building would have been at first to a reader who knew nothing about the myths beyond ‘isn’t he that guy who pulled a sword out of a stone?’. I was looking at names of knights and figures from the legends pop up and immediately started hypothesising about them - this might not have been the case for all readers, and I wonder if they have missed out there.

I think the main issue for me was that this was set in America; it felt too removed from the original tales. I understand completely why the author has made this choice, and I’m not criticising the choice - just that it was something that didn’t personally work for me. I think if this entire story happened identically but in the UK I wouldn’t have a problem with it, because I feel there would be scope for the setting to play a larger role, especially with all the potentially Arthurian sites in and around Wales. It would have been great to see that setting play in to the twists and turns of this fantastic plot!

Legendborn is one of those incredible books that, despite me powering through it at my usual speed, seemed to get longer the more I read? I felt as if I must be near the end, and then checked, and I was barely half way through! That is a good thing though - because I felt Legendborn needed to be the length that it was to be able to tell the story it was telling and in the way it was telling it. I just felt so thoroughly spoiled because I had so much more book still to go!

A lot of this was to do with Bree as a character. Even before the main setup had really got underway, Bree was so compelling that you couldn’t help but have her pull you through the pages. Her absolute resolve to not give up despite everyone telling her to, despite being mollycoddled and patronised and flat-out lied to in parts, made me love her character all the more. It made you just as determined as Bree to break in to this fancy society and find out what the hell is going on, simply because everyone seemed to think that someone like her had no place there. One of my favourite characters of the year so far!

(Although, Simon & Schuster, would it have killed you to print this in a font larger than 8pt? My eyes are already bad enough, without squinting for 400+ pages!)

Overall, Legendborn was a breakneck modern-day fantasy, drawing cleverly on the original legends to rework them in to a modern context. Bree was the stand-out for me, and I can’t wait to find out what happens in the sequel! I rated this 4.5 stars.

Have you read Legendborn?

What were your thoughts?