Book Review – Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

15 January 2021 /
legendborn cover

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape – until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.

A flying demon feeding on human energies.

A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.

And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts – and fails – to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.

The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.

She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets – and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down – or join the fight.

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My rating:

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
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This is just SO much fun. I do love an Arthur inspired tale (I don’t think I’d go so far to call this a retelling as it’s more of an after effects) so I figured I’d like this, plus it was getting rave reviews. I’m pleased to say I wholeheartedly agree with them all!

It is a little time in the book before the real action starts and things start clicking together, but the pace is fast from the start. Bree is really struggling with grief and anger, and those are themes that are throughout the book in a really lovely way – like grief itself, it’s ever-present but not always at the forefront or even relevant. But it is part of everything she does.

I loved the concept of the world, and the way it’s built up around our own. It felt very viable that this world could exist around ours.

I didn’t *love* that it needed to move the Arthur legend away from the UK, it didn’t feel needed. I felt it should have at least had modern roots there rather than a handwave about moving to the US. But I do think that the ages of American college and everything around racism worked better this way, so it’s a mixed bag. It’s also a little full of tropes, including a potential love triangle that I’m sure I’m going to yell at book two about! The love interests are okay, but I’m never a huge romance fan 😉 

However, none of that mattered in the light of all the fun I felt while reading it! The honouring the welsh language is SO LOVELY. As are all the mentions of Black curl maintenance – I always love when curl maintenance is included! And there is SO MUCH about race and slavery and colonialism woven throughout. It’s so well done. And I love that it slows so many elements of smaller racist jabs, or of white people being uncomfortable. It’s not one event, it’s constant and horrible in places, and (sadly) feels like a real set of experiences.

There’s also great LGBT+ rep with lesbian, bi and non-binary characters – Greer in particularly is wonderfully delightful. They are a good foil to Bree as well. 

The characters throughout are lovely – along with Greer, I love William, and Felicity and Tor ended up being favourites too. 

Seriously, read this, you’ll love it. 4.5 stars.

Buy Legendborn from Waterstones.

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