The Young Elites By Marie Lu

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Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Pages: 336

Point of View: First (Adelina) Third (Teren) and occasionally limited third (Enzo)

Released: October 7, 2014

Predictability: 2 out of 5 (Where 1 is George RR Martin (If the characters make a plan or think about the future I know it isn’t going to go that way.) And 5 is Cinder (where I guessed what was going to happen long before it did, but it was still a great book.)

Source: Penguin’s First to Read program. I’d never gotten a book from them before so I didn’t know how it worked. It’s like a library book, it comes in an adobe digital editions format (which works on everything but my plain kindle) and you have two months to read it.

My Rating: 8/10 Stars

Parental Rating: On the verge of an older YA for violence and prostitution.

My Summary:

Ten years ago a blood fever swept through the kingdom and of the children who survived some emerged ‘marked’. They are called malfettos. A select few malfettos are rumored to have super human powers and are called elites. The lazy king blames malfettos for everything, causing them to be scorned and treated terribly.

Adelina is a malfetto and she’s been abused by her father from a young age, because he blames the decline of his business on her being a malfetto. He’s tried everything from breaking her finger to showing her kindness in an attempt to bring out a power in her, then she might be worth something, but one night he goes too far and he’s not happy at all when her dark powers finally emerge.

Teren is the lead inquisitor and convinced all malfettos are demons, he will do anything in his powers to see them all burn.

Enzo is the leader of the Young Elites, a group of powerful malfettos fighting against the king.

My Review:

Young Elites is set on a different world in a medieval kingdom. (I thought it was a future dystopian before I read it, but this is so much better.) We learn about the kingdom and a little about another nation, but I want to know more about this world! Like there’s these flying giant manta ray things, what are they? They seem an odd little world building detail to keep mentioning when everything else is a simple medieval kingdom.

Adelina feels more like a villain than a hero. (She’s not an antihero either.) She’s sympathetic, if a bit unlikable, and fierce, but not stupid. She’s a complex character with many sides and a darkness in her heart. I understand why she is the way she is, she’s been abused for years by her father, not only physically but emotionally as well. In Marie Lu’s Legend Day and June had such a similar voice I was worried Adelina would be the same, but she’s nothing like them at all!

At times I questioned Adelina’s sanity (Teren’s certainly nuts) and I hate books with an insane main character, but here it doesn’t hurt the story. I also liked how I could always tell what was real and what wasn’t. (Another pet peeve of mine, I know I have a lot of them.)

The Good:

I loved the dark atmosphere of this book! I couldn’t put it down and though Young Elites wasn’t what I was expecting I really enjoyed it.

I loved the unique markings the malfettos had. From silver or fiery hair to different colored eyes.

The powers were one of the best parts of the book, they were so cool! The author created an interesting spin on abilities. Usually in these kinds of novels there’s a series of scenes where the character learns how to use their powers and that was sort of done here, but Adelina progressed so quickly that it didn’t slow down the plot in the least.

I like the little quotes and facts about the land at the start of each chapter they really added to the world building.

The Bad:

The characters all had potential, but none of them were developed enough aside from Adelina.

The romance was just okay. I didn’t feel it, but it wasn’t there much so it’s no big.

That ending! (All I can say, sorry.) The next book should be interesting… Though I have no idea what kind of book it will be.

Would I recommend this book? YES! Will I read the next one? OF COURSE!

Book Review: Legend, Prodigy, Champion By Marie Lu

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Genre: Young Adult Dystopian

LEGEND By Marie Lu

This was one of those books that started so good I wanted to read it slowly and savor it. I was also afraid that it wouldn’t hold up to the outstanding beginning, but it did! The plot, the characters, the world, the voice, they were all perfect! I loved it all! (Molly, tone down the fangirl…)

Day is fifteen and the most wanted person in the Republic. He’s guilty of numerous crimes, including theft, breaking into military bases and blowing up jets, but he never hurts anyone. He lives on the streets with a little girl named Tess and secretly watches over his family who believes him to be dead. At the start of Legend the plague has spread to the poor Lake sector where his family lives.

June is also fifteen. At ten every child takes the trial and the results decide what their lives will be like. Where Day failed his test June did more than pass, she’s the only one ever to get a perfect 1500 score. She lives with her brother, a captain in the military (their parents are dead) and goes to the top academy in the country. She’s always getting in trouble for her outrageous stunts; her latest was scaling a sky scraper to see how fast she could do it. (Copying something that Day’s known for.)

The characters are both similar people, even though they’ve led very different lives. They’re both really smart and talented, but in different ways. June is the kind of person who notices every detail and kicks butt in a fight and Day is great at making complicated plans and leaping about on buildings. The story is told from both points of view and I rarely confused the two of them.

In a Dystopian there usually comes a time when the main character realizes what kind of a world they really live in. Day already knows how terrible the government is, but June buys the propaganda. She’s told the truth, but she also figures it out for herself and as such it’s more gradual and realistic for her to totally change her beliefs.

The world the author created is rich and I could really picture it in my head, from June’s fancy apartment to the streets of the Lake Sector.

Legend is a unique Dystopian and my favorite so far!

9/10 Stars!

PRODIGY

Prodigy was almost as good as Legend. Everything wrapped up so wall it felt like the final book of the trilogy not the second. I’m glad they were all released otherwise I would’ve been screaming for the next one. Though things wrapped up, not everything was happily ever after.

At the start of Prodigy I liked both June and Day, but I had no feelings whatsoever about whether they wound up together or not. By the end I was like, NO!! They’re meant to be! (Whispers otp. Molly your fangirl is showing)

Some of the dialogue to catch readers up felt a bit forced, but this was only at the beginning.

I enjoyed learning how the Republic started, that’s the one thing I was wondering about while reading Legend. (We also learned about the Colonies and a bit about the world at large.)

The side characters were better fleshed out and we were introduced to a couple of new characters in the Patriots. (The group who fights against the Republic.) After reading dystopians I automatically distrust everyone the characters meet.

8/10 Stars

CHAMPION

As much as I wanted to read this book, I was afraid to. So many dystopians don’t end happily. (Especially the popular ones, what’s up with that?)

In Champion the war with the Colonies has accelerated and the Patriots are back along with Tess. We also got to see Antarctica, which was cool! (And there could so be another dystopian set from there.)

Talk about a roller coaster ride of emotions! I didn’t like the entire story line with Day. In my opinion it wasn’t necessary and took away from the story.

THE END: Though it’s probably considered a happy ending, I wasn’t happy. The epilogue ten years later tries to fix things, but it felt like too little too late. I think I’ll pretend it ended happily after prodigy. 😉

8/10 Stars

What did you read this week?