Review: Champion - Marie Lu

This is the third and final book in the Legend trilogy by Marie Lu. I can’t say too much without spoiling the other two books, but I will try. At the end I will also write a few words about the short story “collection” (there are only two) “Life Before Legend”, which is also part of the series. 

As I said in my review of Prodigy, I felt like the series wrapped up pretty nicely in the second book, and I was wondering what was going to happen in the third. While stuff certainly went down in the third book, I feel like it was a completely different storyline. It felt like the original storyline wasn’t big enough to fill up 3 books, so they decided to plaster a new story line to the tail end of the old one and string it out to a trilogy. That being said, I did really enjoy this book. 

The characters weren’t really evolved all that much in this book either, I think, they were pretty much going over the same old dilemmas from the other books. 

As for the plot, it was an interesting mix of politics, action and romance. I definitely feel like Marie Lu can write amazing action scenes and steaming romance, but the political plot was kind of boring. I really didn’t enjoy those parts of the book, but as I said the action and romance were great. 

As for the ending it was at the same time tragic and too easy, in my opinion. It sets up for tragedy, but then pulls back at the last minute. Twice! While I do like a happy(ish) ending I also appreciate the tragic endings. Not all books can have happy endings. But this one was trying to do both, and I was like “Make up your mind!” 

I gave this book 3 stars out of 5 on Goodreads, maybe 3,5. 

The series in general:

I really like this series. Partly because it finally pulled me out of a “series-slump” where I had been reading the first book in series and not liking them enough to continue, and partly because it is actually quite good! There are definitely some slow parts, all the political stuff and the planning of attacks and stuff, but when the action picks up, you fly through the pages. I would definitely recommend this series to anyone who likes a dystopian setting. 

“Life Before Legend”:

This is a short-story “collection”. I say “collection” because there are only two. One from Day and one from June. It is marked as “Legend 0.5” but in my box set it was placed after the second book, and I think that is how you are supposed to read it. Which in my world would make it “Legend 2.5”, but oh well. I didn’t really like these stories. They take place before Day and June meet each other and give us a little look into their lives, but I didn’t really feel like it added anything to the main story. We could have easily done without them. I guess short stories aren't really supposed to be necessary for the main plot, but I couldn’t help but feel that this was just a money-making ploy, because it was so unnecessary. 

Legend review

Prodigy review