Legendborn by Tracy Deonn is the first full-length review I’ve written in a while, because it’s one of my new favorite books, and I really had to gush. I read it all in one day, couldn’t put it down, and love so much about it. Legendborn is a modern-day story about secret societies, grief and Arthurian legend, all while being Black in the US South. It’s got so much going on, so many layers and mysteries to unravel.

Filled with mystery and an intriguingly rich magic system, Tracy Deonn’s YA contemporary fantasy Legendborn offers the dark allure of City of Bones with a modern-day twist on a classic legend and a lot of Southern Black Girl Magic.

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.

The book starts with Bree learning about the death of her mother, I knew this when I ordered the book, but then I forgot, and in any case I wouldn’t have expected it to be so important in the book, such a constant feature and so explored. Often fantasy heroes quickly get over the death of a parent, or it’s something in the past, almost like a character trait. Not here. It was painful, and angry, and unfair and it did not go away. I found the way she couldn’t be around her dad and deal with his grief on top of hers particularly relatable. She was constantly driven to figure out if the death was really an accident.

My overall feeling after finishing the book is one of joy and excitement because it’s a lot of fun, but it also goes to a lot of dark places, not just her trauma from her mom’s recent death but also a lot of the instances of racism she encounters. There were a lot of examples: there’s a party and the police single our her and her Taiwanese-American friend to get in trouble with the school, when she’s in a very white space some newcomers assume she’s hired help, a lot of things from the range of meaningful looks to physical attacks. But the one I really wasn’t expecting was when after about half the book, she ends up in a group with only other Black women, and she’s able to relax in a way she hasn’t been able to, since arriving at the school, I found it a really memorable moment.

The book is set at Early College, and while we don’t get a lot of school time, in the sense of classroom time and such, there’s a lot of fraternity life. Well, the secret society life, which is kinda like a fraternity with extra dark secrets, magic and demons. And that was one of my favorite things in this book, there were so many secrets and mysteries. Whenever Bree learned something there was another layer just beneath that. This is the part where it reminded me of The Last Sun by K.D. Edwards, because there was so much going on, and barely slowing down, always another thing, the pacing was very intense and everything kept scaling up.

I’m usually not that into romance in YA, but it worked for me here, I was really rooting for those kids the entire time, and it felt like it was occupying the right place in the story. There were some “YA tropes” that usually annoy me, but they just didn’t this time. It’s entirely possible that my few years break from YA brought my tolerance back to normal levels.

I also liked the characters, how Bree struggles with all these things going in her life and sometimes she has to be strong and other times she crumbles. Alice, her best friend is great, I could’ve done with a bit more of her, they start with such a strong bond and then she kinda gets pushed aside for a while. Some of the people she meets in the secret society I like, some I despised, but in a good way.

Another thing I really loved was how the King Arthur, Camelot and all those myths and tropes were woven into the story. I really wished I knew more than just the most well known parts, cause then I might have caught some more parallels. For instance there was thing, which is a huge spoiler, but I figured out from the beginning where it was going. And then it tied into the legend so well, I was really impressed just sitting there enjoying how everything clicked.

So that’s about it from me. I’m sure every book must have it flaws, but this was a strong case of love at first site for me, and the more I think about it the more I just remember things I loved. Like the time she was all covered in dirt and blood, gets home in the middle of the night, and realizes in the shower that she’s gonna be at least another hour washing and drying her curly hair, because she’d gotten monster gunk in it.

r/fantasy bingo: Novel Published in 2020 H, Set in a School or University, A Book that Made You Laugh, Feminist Novel

BLM book bingo: JUSTICE: basedon or inspired by real life injustice, EMPEROR: father MC or father-child relationship, HIEROPHANT: coming of age or YA contemporary, MOON: explore mental health, LOVERS: featuring strong friendships or romance, DEATH: book published after 7/1/2020, JUDGEMENT: book wtih an overused trope, STRENGTH: action-adventure

Goodreads 

If you’re interested in Legendborn by Tracy Deonn you might also like my review of  Dread Nation by Justina Ireland or A Blade so Black by L.L. McKinley