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Fantastic Storytelling
4.5 ⭐ 0 🌶️ 5 🎧 Holy heck that was intense and I absolutely adored it. I'm not a huge fantasy reader because I have trouble easily comprehending world building, and that was really my only downside to this story. It's HEAVY on the world building and occasionally hits you hard with it. All that being said, I mostly got it and it was a very cool world to be in. I loved Bree and Nick and really all of these characters. They're strong and wonderful and I loved getting to know them. This book is also super rich in Black issues—Tracy doesn't shy away from some very tough topics including slavery and racism as it exists in today and the past. Bree is a Black girl in a white man's world and she has a very powerful story that Tracy is telling and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series. The audio was fantastic. Joniece Abbott-Pratt did such an incredible job bringing these characters to life and I loved this listen.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Heroic MASTERPIECE
I’d call Legendborn a heroic MASTERPIECE because it gives readers a new kind of hero - Bree Matthews a Black girl who fights not just magical enemies but also the pain of racism and loss. Tracy Deonn turns a familiar legend into something powerful and deeply rooted in African American culture , showing that heroism , remembering and reclaiming your story! I love this book
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Swords, magic, and social studies, oh my!
4.5* stars. Summary: A solid contemporary retelling of Arthurian legend with mostly unique takes on magic, characters that feel real, and emotions that seep from the page into your hands, letting you feel what the characters feel. Recommended if you like action, the feels - complete with a bit of romance - or love nerding out about history and legendary tales. Full review: There is a lot of information that needed to be told in Legendborn, the first of The Legendborn Cycle trilogy, which the proudly self-identified nerd in me absolutely loved. However, at times, it was a lot at once, even though it was told through dialogue. Oftentimes, that helps with the drawlness of large paragraphs of history or lore, but my mind still wandered while important details were being told, causing me to reread some parts. As someone who read the Arthurian tales when I was younger, of my own volition, not for a school assignment, I enjoyed this retelling of the Knights of the Round Table. The weaving of mundane college life with the magical Herculean task of going through the trials to enter a secret society while trying not to die from demon attacks from a different plane was well depicted. The scenes sometimes felt a little bouncy when going through time jumps to move to important segments, but those little parts that weren't necessary for the overall plot helped to get into Bree's mindset. At the beginning, I wasn't that much of a fan of Bree; I respected her and felt for what she was going through, but her attitude rubbed me the wrong way at times. Going through the novel and watching Bree learn about herself, her life, and open up her feelings to not only those around her, but letting herself feel what she had pushed away for so long since her mom had died, it felt freeing. Like it did for Bree. Every emotion she felt, I felt. Grief, happiness, confusion, strength and confidence, numbness, liberation: everything. Of course, when you're learning about magic, generational magic, all is not always what it seems. It is a bigger burden. But I liked how in the end, Bree handled walking the line between her two worlds, learning to accept herself and her place in both worlds. Along with the magic system - which I love the terms Root and Aether and how both "sides" understand the magic that flows through their veins - the characters have some stereotypical characteristics but are each unique in their own right once you get passed the initial introduction and meet the person in the character, making them feel real.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A fantastic departure from standard fantasy
If you're tired of fae and dragons.. read this. If you want more diverse representation in your fantasy books.. read this. If you like unique magic systems, King Arthur-inspired lore, and want to read about a bada** FMC.. READ THIS BOOK!! Legendborn takes themes of grief, racism, family expectations, and growing up Black in the South, and seamlessly blends them with a fascinatingly unique magic system wrapped up in generations of secret societies.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Captivating fantasy
This was an electrifying YA fantasy read that was both highly entertaining and emotionally resonant. This unique book tackles grief and loss with remarkable sensitivity, weaving a fast-paced narrative that's impossible to put down. With strong character development and a gripping thriller plot, it's a compelling story of women finding their strength. I highly recommend it, and cant wait to read the next installment!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
BEST SERIES EVEERRR
I love this series SO MUCH. It is perfect in every single way literally what are you doing if you haven't read this
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Quit procrastinating on this book like I did!
I hate to say this—especially since I grew up obsessed with books and TV shows about magic and myths and aliens—but I was really starting to believe I just don’t like fantasy anymore. After reading a few fantasy novels that I could feel are objectively good books but simply not clicking with them, I was scared it was time for me to just stay away from the whole genre. But then my hold for Legendborn came in on Libby just in time for me to read this for a Diverse Baseline Challenge prompt, and oh. my. god. I was blown away by this book. Turns out, I just needed a reminder that my love of fantasy lies almost exclusively in low fantasy. I’m obsessed with stories that take place in our world but add a magical twist, and Tracy Deonn does this so expertly that it should be required reading for fantasy writers everyone. Legendborn is a story inspired, in part, by the legend of King Arthur, which I think it why it wasn’t really on my radar because what do I care about King Arthur? But also what did I care about Greek mythology until I read Percy Jackson. What’d I care about The Great Gatsby before I read Anna-Marie McLemore’s remixed version? The point is, don’t let that deter you from picking this up if it has been. Doesn’t matter! This book is worth it. Deonn also pulls inspiration from US history, specifically its history of slavery and violently erasing the ancestral knowledge of the Black people captured as slaves. She takes this history and all the anger and grief wrapped up with it and builds a whole magic system around it and ties an existing legend into the world building, and I thought I wasn’t gonna care about this book because I didn’t know anything about King Arthur? Man, I’m ridiculous sometimes. But plenty of people have written alternate magical histories, Ben. Okay, but not like this one. Also, don’t you want more anyway? Come on. Bree Matthews’ story unfolds in the middle of an intersection, and she just keeps discovering more and more roads crossing there. She goes, as a normal teenage girl, to this early college program at UNC-Chapel hill, a primarily white institution that accepted her application but doesn’t exactly accept her presence. Then she witnesses a magical attack her first night on campus. This event tangles her up with a secret society of people, all descendants of King Arthur and his knights who respond to these magical attacks. They take her in, some more willingly than others, and she begins to learn about aether and magic that runs through bloodlines. But wait! There’s also this whole other way of practicing magic that she learns about from a Black staff member and student on campus. Turns out aether is actually called root and there’s a philosophy of practicing it that runs entirely contrary to that of the Order’s? And the Order is a group of white people obsessed with their lineage who’s up to no good? Man, that’s wild. Who’d’ve thought? Still, Bree doesn’t see herself fitting into either world and can’t get a handle on the magic raging inside her. She does know, however, that figuring it out will bring clarity on what happened to her mother, so she charges on. In summary, I don’t have a single negative thing to say about this book. Legendborn isn’t simply a contemporary retelling of King Arthur; it’s a story of grief, believing in yourself, blood family and found family, generational trauma, colonialism, and challenging the systems in place. It feels weird telling people to go read this because I feel like I’m the last one to arrive to this party, but if you’re somehow even later than I am, you seriously need to get a copy of Legendborn and join Bree as she uncovers her family’s history and finds her own magic.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Loved It!
Legendborn is a novel that follows Briana, or rather Bree, a sixteen-year-old girl who attends a residential early college program at the University of North Carolina with her best friend Alice. Not to just get a head start but to escape the painful memories of her mother’s recent death. After witnessing a magical attack her very first night on campus, Bree not only unlocks a unique magic but also discovers a secret society of “Legendborn” who hunt demons that feed on human energy. Bree infiltrates this brand-new world to find out if her mother’s death was truly accidental, not knowing she will discover and encounter so much more about herself, her family, and her connection to the Legendborn 👀. I went into this book believing that it would be a typical YA triangle-romance fantasy novel just with a Black girl planted in the lead as our FMC. However, I was pleasantly surprised and even shocked at how profound this book is. There is acknowledgement of Bree’s Blackness, her culture, and her identity as a Black girl in a majority-white space. There is direct criticism and condemnation towards the Legendborn secret society, which has been operating for decades, about their active history of racism, colonialism, discrimination, and underhanded misogyny. Whew, it was very compelling to see how the author Tracy Deonn confronted and highlighted each issue. Now I must say the lore/“system” was confusing. There were some things that made sense; however, the secret society and its different lineage lines, its hierarchies, and factions as well as the Round Table, etc., confused the heck out of me. The friendships, relationships, and obviously the plot depended on the lore, and because I couldn’t get a good grasp on the lore, it dampened the reading experience. I couldn’t connect with any of the side characters because I literally could not keep up with who was who and what their rank was 😂. If you are well versed in Arthurian (King of Arthur) lore, it will be easy to catch on. I hope the lore is expanded on more in the next book. My last little bit, the Hoodoo element, upped my respect for this book and actually inspired me to…take this book seriously. I truly honor Deonn for acknowledging the importance of our ancestors, their power and sacrifice, and how they’re a significant part of our story by demonstrating that through Bree. Thank you to Tracy Deonn for writing this book. Can’t wait to read the second one.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com