Prodigy, Marie Lu – Book Review

Hello humans! We’re on part…5(?) of my journey through the adventures of Marie Lu’s writing (do we count Batman?) Anyway, this is a review of the second book in the Legend series Prodigy. I was left hooked after book one and immediately had to read the next. YA dystopian trilogies are my jam, but second books can be tricky. I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts.

FYI, there may be spoilers for book one in this review, hard to avoid really…

Goodreads Summary:

Injured and on the run, it has been seven days since June and Day barely escaped Los Angeles and the Republic with their lives. Day is believed dead having lost his own brother to an execution squad who thought they were assassinating him. June is now the Republic’s most wanted traitor. Desperate for help, they turn to the Patriots – a vigilante rebel group sworn to bring down the Republic. But can they trust them or have they unwittingly become pawns in the most terrifying of political games?

Find Prodigy on Goodreads

Essentially, this book carries on from the end of the first story. The two POVs remain the same, the setting is the same and so forth. This isn’t one of those trilogies where book two takes an entirely different stance, for example, The Sleeping Prince or Gemina.

Since this book is a continuation of book one, it’s not surprising that the themes are continued as well. In my previous review, I talked about how this is all to do with information and the gradual realisation that what you know may not be the truth. This is turned up to eleven in this book, I had no idea what was going to happen and who I should trust at any one moment and I loved every minute of it!

I loved how this world expanded in the second book. Obviously, this always had quite a worldwide scope from the get-go, and June’s military position gave a much more politically nuanced view of things than we might have got had the entire story been narrated by Day. However, in this book, we get to meet some of the people and organisations and to visit some of the places that were mentioned in the first book. It’s the perfect use of a second novel, expand on your themes, expand on your setting, keep us interested in your characters.

I’ve always loved the idea of young characters being pawns in bigger games, it’s why I loved The Hunger Games so much and why I keep reading YA dystopian novels. This book captures this well, the idea of having to fight against being part of a system but not being certain of what’s going to replace that was also a powerful idea. ‘Better the devil you know’ was the phrase that came to my mind.

This book is even more action packed than Legend, I particularly enjoyed all the scenes of plans and plots being made and then everything (inevitably) going wrong, it pushes all the right buttons.

There are still some moments which feel very cliché and I can’t say this romance isn’t predictable as heck, but darn it this is a good book!

My rating: 4/5 stars

All opinions are my own.

What say you? What’s your favourite YA trilogy? Let me know in the comments below!