For the past couple years, the book Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn, has been popular on BookTok. It’s about a girl, Brianna Matthews, who, upon entering an Early College program at her recently deceased mother’s alma mater, discovers a world of magic and mystery that she is inevitably intertwined with. What starts with a demon attack on campus leads to Bree realizing that there is more to her mother’s death than she thought.
The first book in this series is filled with mystery, magic and Arthurian legend (the magic system is a modern reimagining of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table), set against the background of a real-life North Carolina college campus. If that description piques your interest, read on to hear the pros and cons of picking up the series this summer.
I will be the first person to rave about this series. Deonn has me invested in all of her characters, not just Bree. I worry about Nick and Selwyn’s past, am grateful for William’s strength, while wondering how he carries it all and fret over Alice and Bree’s relationship. Each character is wonderfully fleshed out, and, while Bree is the main character, every other person in the story has depth and shows growth. This stands to be true throughout all three books, even as new characters are introduced and the story grows more and more complex.
One of the series’s flaws actually lies in this complexity. While the world building started fairly simple for a fantasy book, by book three, I started to get lost. Bree and her allies seem to have enemies on all sides, who use the same magical resource with different names, uses and beliefs surrounding it. What started as two rival parties (“Rootcrafters” and “Legendborn”), quickly turned into four to six, depending on how you quantify it.
Because of the intensity of the magic system, I would not recommend this as an intro to fantasy book. I myself had to backtrack numerous times throughout the third book (Oathbound), just to remember who’s who. For a seasoned fantasy reader, the magic system brings something new to the table: Arthurian legend. Like how Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a reimagining of Greek mythology, bringing Greek gods (and their children) into the modern world, The Legendborn Cycle does the same, with King Arthur. Arthurian legend wasn’t something I knew much about before entering into this series, and while I still don’t know much about it, Deonn’s version was fascinating.
Despite some of the series’s flaws, the writing of the books are beautiful. Deonn explores heavy and complicated topics, like race, grief, child abuse, connection and identity so skillfully throughout these books. It makes it so that, while they are YA, the topics are applicable to many audiences. It deals with both the history of racial discrimination in the south, through Bree’s family history and the history of the college campus, and racial discrimination in her present day life.
While race is a main topic in the series, as Bree is an African-American teenager living in the South, other representation is included much more subtly. Bree’s best friend, Alice, is mentioned as being a lesbian early on in the series, but not to explain who she is, or to make a point to include diversity. It’s just brought up in a conversation between the girls, talking about potentially meeting lovers at school. Another character uses they/them pronouns, and the characters don’t make a huge deal about it when they are introduced. Bree just starts using their pronouns, both in dialogue and in her narration.
Book three of The Legendborn Cycle ended on a cliffhanger (a massive one), and we have a ways to go before the fourth book is released. Suffice it to say, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for the next installment, and will be re-reading the series once or twice before we get book four.
Overall, I am an enthusiastic recommender of The Legendborn Cycle series to anyone who likes fantasy, YA, fast-paced books, or secret societies. Despite how tangled the magic seems to become, the writing, character development, thought-out themes, and a plot that kept me on the edge of my seat lead me to rate this series a 9.5/10.
Buy it on Amazon here.
Or see if it’s available at Adel Public Library!
