Saturday, December 03, 2011

2011 book 306

Marie Lu's Legend
This is basically the buzziest YA book to come out in a while, but I wasn't sure if I'd read it--and then the NYT gave it a rave and I was convinced. Now, it's not perfect--the writing is occasionally heavy-handed, lots of telling-instead-of-showing (mainly in terms of the romance)--but it is a really fun read, about a future militaristic dystopia where a young (girl) prodigy is tasked with hunting down an infamous (young boy) criminal. But obviously things are more complicated than that--I mean, it's a dystopia, after all. I've read that the main characters were inspired by Javert and Jean Valjean but can't comment on any other parallels to Les Miserables, as I haven't read it in well over a decade. A-.

No comments: