Review: Prodigy, by Marie Lu

Title: Prodigy (Legend, #2)
Author: Marie Lu
Genre: YA dystopia
Pub. date: Jan. 29, 2013

June and Day arrive in Vegas just as the unthinkable happens: the Elector Primo dies, and his son Anden takes his place. With the Republic edging closer to chaos, the two join a group of Patriot rebels eager to help Day rescue his brother and offer passage to the Colonies. They have only one request—June and Day must assassinate the new Elector.

It’s their chance to change the nation, to give voice to a people silenced for too long.

But as June realizes this Elector is nothing like his father, she’s haunted by the choice ahead. What if Anden is a new beginning? What if revolution must be more than loss and vengeance, anger and blood—what if the Patriots are wrong?

In this highly-anticipated sequel, Lu delivers a breathtaking thriller with high stakes and cinematic action. -Goodreads

You find joy in torturing us, don't you, Marie Lu? You couldn't have just spared us from the suffering of a cliffhanger?

Just kidding, we all love you, Ms. Lu. Despite the FEELS that you are making me drown in, I will forgive you since you wrote such an awesome second book that was even better than the first.

Girl, you wrote some ninja-paced action scenes. They were phenomenal, they were amazing, they made me dizzy from how fast-paced they were. We wanted action, and you satisfied us.

I loved how Marie Lu expanded on the dystopian world of Legend. Since setting and world-building are super important for a good dystopian novel, it really made this book stand out of the other dystopia novels crowding bookshelves.

Besides the improvement of the world-building, I loved how much the characters grew between book 1 and book 2. The author made this gradual character growth so believable that I didn't feel, at any time, that they were acting out of character.

Not the biggest fan of Tess, though. I wanted to smack her upside the head whenever she was speaking. Sometimes, she did act out of character.

Put simply, I was truly impressed by the author's talent at switching POV's. She managed to make each character have their own unique, distinct voices that made it easy to identify who was speaking. Not many authors can manage this, so color me dazzled by her talent.

After reading Legend, and going into Prodigy, I thought I already knew what was going to happen. I had the plot all planned out in my head, and knew what to expect. Man, was I wrong. One thing I know for sure: it would be horribly inaccurate to say this book is any way predictable. The plot twists were just too much to endure.

During the last 10 pages or so, I naively believed it was going to be a happy ending. I'll admit, Marie Lu, you had me fooled. One second everything was all good then...

BAM!

I was bombarded with feels. That ending caught me off guard. I found myself furiously re-reading the last few pages, to see if I actually read it correctly. That horrible reveal was, unfortunately, true.

4.5 out of 5 stars!