Legendborn by Tracy Deonn - Book Review

 

Growing up, my go-to genre of books was YA Dystopian or Romance. Although I have always enjoyed the magical creatures that are highly used in Fantasy novels, I never found myself drawn to this genre. However, throughout the past year, ever since entering my early twenties, I set myself a challenge to open up the genres I read. As a writer, who has written Romance and YA adventure/thriller novels, I believe it is vital to expand what you read as it helps you learn more about yourself.

On my journey to find a Fantasy novel to begin my development in this genre, I found Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. I was captivated by the book's design, which originally made me pick this book up. On the cover, we have sixteen-year-old Bree, our protagonist, with her powers swirling around her arms in red and blue.

 

The blurb is what pulled me all the way. Before reading the novel, we learn that Bree’s mother has passed away in an accident. For Bree, all she wants to do is to forget about her family memories and decide to join this high-school programme at a college. But within the first night, Bree witnesses a demon attack, which unlocks her forgotten memory, and she realises that something similar happened during her mother’s death. Throughout the novel, Bree learns about a magical society that lives in the college, who are the descendants of King Arthur’s knights. But not only that, she learns how her mother’s past was magical as well.

 

There are many reasons why I would applaud this book, but one of the main areas that I enjoyed was how Deonn made her characters realistic. In many books, when a character has gone through a tragic change, for example, the death of a parent, it is only mentioned a couple of times and never again. Whereas in this book, the death of Bree’s mum is what pushes Bree to learn about this new magical world. And we are shown how Bree learns to understand this new life without her mum, and we go on the journey with her. Even if you are lucky enough to have yet experienced something like this, Bree’s actions are still realistic as you can see yourself behaving the same way if you were put into this situation.

I also really enjoyed the twists that happened in this novel, as this always made me try to guess what might happen next. Deonn doing this makes the novel gripping, which makes any reader want to grasp their hands on the next book straight away to find out about what will happen next once finishing Legondborn.

On top of that, you can one hundred percent tell that Deonn has done her research, and that is something that everyone should praise her for. The magic Rootcraft, we later learn in the “Author’s Note” that she was inspired by the history of African Americans, and how they created Rootwork.

 

The only downfall I would point out is the timing and pace of the novel. By the end of the book, you find out it has just been over a week since the novel started. In my mind, I thought the time period was a lot bigger. For starters, a lot happened, with Bree learning about the magic society, the Rootcraft, and what type of person her mother was before her death. Bree also ends up in many fights with different magical creatures, and different events occur. With such a vast amount of incidents occurring, I believed that the time period was over a month.

 

Nevertheless, I am looking forward to reading the next book of this YA Fantasy series and seeing how the characters will develop from the news they have just learnt at the end of Legendborn. I am really happy that I choose Legendborn as a step into the fantasy genre, and I can’t wait for whatever twists Tracy Deonn has written in the new book (however, I most likely will only be able to read it next year after my travels.)

This is why, for me, this book deserves 4/5 stars.