Book Review: Legend

Legend by Marie Lu (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2011. 305 pp)

Marie Lu was born near Shanghai, China, in 1984. She attended the University of Southern California, and before becoming a full-time writer, she was an Art Director at a video game company. She lives in Pasadena with her boyfriend and three dogs.

Capitalizing on the Trend

Capitalizing on teen, angst-driven dystopian fiction, 27 year-old Marie Lu obviously had a target market for the novel, Legend. I certainly can’t blame her for exploiting the newest craze, especially since the movie rights already have been purchased from the same people who produced the poorly written Twilight franchise. For this reason, Legend came across my radar, and having a penchant for dystopian fiction, I thought it might be a fun read.

The Republic

Legend is set in a future world amid the ruins of Los Angeles in the Republic of America, a country at war with the colonies, which are east of a no-man’s-land, the vast expanse from the Dakotas to west Texas. The two teenaged protagonists are Day and June. Having both taken the government’s exam called the trial (similar to the SAT), they have ended up in dissimilar situations. Day is the Republic’s most wanted rebel, and June is a top-of-the-line soldier and servant of the Republic.

“[Someone] gets a perfect score—1500 points. No one’s ever gotten this—well, except for some kid a few years ago who the military made a goddy fuss over. Who knows what happens to someone with a score that high? Probably lots of money and power, yeah? You score between a 1450 and a 1499. Pat yourself on the back because you’ll get instant access to six years of high school and then four at the top universities in the Republic: Drake, Stanford, and Brenan…You squeak by with a score between 1000 and 1249. Congress bars you from high school. You join the poor, like my family…You fail. It’s almost always the slum-sector kids who fail. If you’re in this unlucky category, the Republic sends officials to your family’s home. They make your parents sign a contract giving the government full custody over you” (7).

In this caste society, the scores create a complete divide where the brilliant rule and the unintelligent frequent the slums where a mysterious plague kills people.

Photo by Chris Lott

Day is set on finding vials of plague cures for his family so they can survive in the lurid living conditions they’ve been forced into. June lures Day into a trap in order to catch the Republic’s most wanted criminal. Moreover, she wants to catch him for personal reasons—he killed her brother, Metias. Once lured into the trap and caught, she familiarizes herself with Day before turning him in to her superiors. June begins to wonder if Day is as bad as the Republic has depicted.

“Maybe Day didn’t kill Metias, I tell myself. Maybe it was someone else. God—am I making excuses to protect this boy now?” (141)

My Complaints

Then—no surprises here—both characters end up working together, fighting the Republic, and figuring out the dark secrets their country has spawned. And, following the teen dystopian craze set in motion by The Hunger Games, they fall in love and beat the odds. Much like The Hunger Games, there is no real danger in the novel. Both characters are agile, smart, and altogether better specimens than their rivals. Unlike better novels where there is danger for the main characters—A Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings are great examples—the characters you root for are always going to survive, in very predictable fashion.

What’s more, in an act of what could be brilliant writing, Marie Lu organizes the book in alternating journal entries from the main protagonists, Day and June. However, Day’s journal entries are filled with annoying colloquialisms and clichés like “cousin”. The intention may have been to make him seem uneducated and edgy, but it was only exasperating in the end. In addition, the voices of Day and June are almost exactly the same, even with the occasional colloquialism in Day’s journal entries. If the entries weren’t printed in different type, one would be hard-pressed to tell the difference.

Overall, I loved the plot of Legend; it interlaced some brilliant ideas. I also enjoyed the notion of the world Marie Lu created. However, with some literary missteps, the novel simply fell short for me. The lack of fear and the annoying language caused ample amounts of frustration. If you want to read a dystopian teen fiction, stick to The Hunger Games, which frankly has the same problems, but they are much less frequent.

Verdict: 2 out of 5


What do you think? Have you found annoyances in teen dystopian fiction? Conversely, did you enjoy Legend? Is there merit to this new trend?
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Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

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Book Review: Genesis

Genesis: A Novel by Bernard Beckett (New York: First Mariner Books, 2010. 150pp)

Bernard Beckett (b. 1967) is a high school teacher in Wellington, New Zealand. He teaches math, drama, and English. He wrote Genesis while researching DNA mutations.

A Doctoral Thesis 

I entered a vacant room. A projector glowed, brightly illuminating the tension of the space. In the next fifteen minutes, I watched academics, some of whom I knew, fill the room in quiet anxiety. Then, my friend, a hopeful doctor, entered the room, connected his computer to the projector and nervously waited for three influential professors to ascend their thrones of power. As they entered the room, the one in the middle addressed the crowd, announcing,

“Welcome to the oral portion of the doctoral defense, we will now begin.”

I then watched my friend eloquently, yet nervously, present his dissertation to the panel. All the while, I understood that I would never willingly go through that kind of hell. In Genesis by Bernard Beckett, the protagonist, Anaximander, is presenting her thesis to a panel on the life of Adam Forde and the android Art, whose interactions are crucial to the forming of a new utopian republic after the world collapsed into apocalyptic ruin. Successful completion of said defense gains entry into “The Academy”, the elite governing institution of her perfected society.

“It would be a great honor to be selected, of course, bun Anax was clear that it was not honor that motivated her. To join The Academy was to serve the society. The society she loved. The finest society the planet had ever seen. To join The Academy was to take responsibility for the peace that settled over the shelters, and the laughter that echoed in the streets. The Academy designed the education program. The Academy moderated technology’s march. The Academy managed the balance between the individual and the cause, between the opportunity and the fear. The Academy pored over the details of the past, and learned from each advancement and every mistake. The Academy had met the Idea head on, and negotiated with it a lasting peace” (117).

Bernard Beckett

The Academy exists as the prominent answer to the decline of civilization. The world had become corrupt and inevitably engaged in war over oil, religion, etc. But, during Anax’s examination, she comes to the conclusion that perhaps The Republic isn’t the wonderful utopia she thought it was.

“The Republic, in the end, was a rational response to an irrational problem. To arrest change is to arrest decay. To bury the individual beneath the weight of the state, is to bury too the individual’s fears. It was possible to see what they were trying to do, but easy too to see, from this distance, that no state can ever weigh that heavily. Always, the individual’s fears will wriggle free” (116).

In order to gain admittance into The Academy, Anax presents her thesis on Adam Forde and Art over several grueling hours. She confronts unresolved questions of science and philosophy unexplored by her utopian counterparts. The Republic was formed in order to create a perfect society, but during the course of her examination, Anax begins to find flaws in The Republic, and in the story of Adam Forde.

Android versus Human 

Through her examination, Anaximander describes the interactions between Forde and Art, retelling the history with careful deliberate words. Anax exposes new and cohesive ideas on both Forde and Art, which consistently surprise her panel.

“I am saying only that Adam believes he should follow his head, I do not however believe he can. This is the second element. We see here the battle that every person faces. For while he may reason one way, he is still victim to his emotions” (86).

Consciousness

Anax tells that as Art and Forde get to know each other, their conversations become deeper, and Art grows far more intelligent than expected. In conversation, they tried to distinguish human from machine, from organic thought to robotic thought. As Art tells Forde (read from a transcript),

“I don’t know what it means to be conscious. You have stripped me of that certainty. I find, having you as my only companion, I am drawn toward treating you as if you are as conscious as I am, but perhaps this is nothing more than a prisoner’s kind of madness” (128).

In a time of everlasting peace and prosperity where the individual is crushed and the state rules supreme, Anax finds in her studies that no state can control every individual and someone will inevitably wiggle free. As she deliberates with her examiners, she finds what it really means to be human, and with a surprising twist at the end, this philosophically-minded novel is a treat. I sincerely recommend Genesis for you to read.

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5

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Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

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