book review : legendborn

Genre: Fantasy

Reading age: 13+

Rating: 7/10

Another Tiktok sensation ticked off my list… I’m a big fan of the legend of King Arthur and attended a school which had a lot of influences from the legend, so once I heard it was reimagined with an element of black girl magic, this book immediately joined by TBR list.

However I have mixed emotions about the story itself. For me it was hard to get stuck into and it took me much longer than usual to finish, but that being said I definitely added the second instalment of the series into my Amazon cart, once I finished this one.

Even though the story is rooted in black girl magic, it doesn’t really feel that way. I think this comes from the fact that book is about a secret society with powerful white kids and for the majority of the story, the black girl is the outsider. Despite this, race is a central theme within the story, which is why I would go as far to say there’s an element of historical fiction to it with recurring references to slavery in the south. In an abstract way, the story really shows that slavery was not that long ago and the effects of slavery still live within us today.

16 year old Briana (Bree for short) Matthews joins Carolina university on an early admission programme with her best friend Alice Chen, but soon after they arrive things start to get weird. In an attempt to stay close to her late mother, who also attended the university, Bree finds herself drawn to a boy (or two) part of a peculiar student group, which leads to a journey of self discovery.

When the love story becomes my favourite part of a book that’s not meant to explicitly be a romance, I’m not sure if I actually loved the story or not. I’m a hopeless romantic, so I always love love. However I believe a good fantasy story, doesn’t need a love story to hold its own weight.

The world Tracy Deonn builds is very interesting but it’s hard to grasp at first because it exist alongside a world we already know. We’re quickly introduced to many elements of this new world whilst still trying to understand the real world setting Bree lives in. And Bree’s world is filled with grief, so in some ways she blocks us from seeing the world Deonn has created for what it really is. There might be a message about the effect of grief on one’s sense of reality that I’m yet to unpack.

Aside from the love story, I really liked the diverse characters in this book. Most of the characters are queer, and I love how this is embedded and not a central focus. However with such a heavy focus on race, I can’t help but think if this is just a luxury awarded to those who don’t face intersectional discrimination, in layman’s terms, it’s not a ‘thing’ because they’re white. And although Deonn may not have intended it to read this way, when the intersection of class/social status meets sexual orientation, we see this isn’t embraced as gleefully. I’ll be interested to see if this theme comes back up in the second book.

We spend a lot of time in this book trying to understand who Bree is and what her motivations are but because of the heavy focus on death, we don’t get to see her ‘live’ a lot. I’m looking forward to seeing what the second book brings now that she’s gained some closure. This series has a lot of potential and I think now that the foundations are set, I’m in for a ride!

Buy it here: https://amzn.eu/d/2I5NrmN