Great Reads for Great Readers

 

Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn.                 Young Adults.

 

 

           16 year-old Black girl Bree Matthews is suffering.  Her mother was killed in a hit-and-run three months before, and Bree’s grief is all-consuming, except for the prospect of a huge change of scene:  a scholarship for a year’s  Pre-college study at North Carolina University.  Her best friend is going too, and Bree is grabbing at the distraction and new environment like a lifeline:  Anything to help her forget the terrible yawning emptiness in her life, and the fact that her last words to her mother were cruel.

            At first, the new setting works – until she and her friend Alice go to an Off-Campus outdoor party, and what started out to be pranks and loutish behaviour turn into a situation that Bree has trouble believing:  monsters suddenly materialising, and being just as quickly vanquished by the companion assigned to her by the Dean to keep her on the straight and narrow. (Thanks, Dad!)  As if that weren’t bizarre enough, Nick and his companions are called Legendborn and belong to a highly secret society made up of pages, vassals and knights whose duty it is to protect the ‘once-born’ (ordinary people) from said monsters of every stripe trying to find gates to enter the normal world to feast on the once-born.  The fact that once-borns are spectacularly unaware of Legendborns’ existence testifies to their success.

            Brie is, naturally, staggered.  Who knew that the education she is receiving has nothing to do with what she signed up for.  And to make matters much worse: she is the only Black girl – not in the college;  there IS diversity of a sort – but to be invited to join (if she gets through the trials) this WHITE-male-dominated secret society which hails back to the days of King Arthur.

            Brie is proud to be Black.  She’s proud of who and what she is and she doesn’t need favours from anyone.  She decides to go along with things, but only for a time – until she discovers the truth about her mother’s death;  there are too many unanswered questions about the where, how and why of it.  If they want to use her for any reason, well, she’ll use them right back!

            Ms Deonn has written a thriller which, maze-like, dense plotting aside (not to mention an army of minor characters – and all those monsters!) has the reader staying up to the wee hours to find out What Happened Next, and When:  I was very glad to finish it – not that there was anything resolved – bring on Book Two! – but I could finally get a good night’s sleep again!  (And at my age, that’s very important.)  FIVE STARS.