In Legend, America has been divided into two: the Republic on the west coast and the Colonies on the east. They’re at war with each other and no one remembers that the country used to be whole. A terrible plague grips the Republic. The poor suffer most from it, since they are unable to afford the vaccine. Living in this world are our two fifteen year old protagonists: Day, a male fugitive from the law who’s become notorious for several carefully-planned crimes; and June, a female prodigy who has been trained as a Republic soldier. When June’s brother is murdered, ostensibly by Day, the Republic sends her to hunt him down. And there is our story, told in alternating chapters from Day’s and June’s perspectives.

I appreciated Lu’s honesty with her depictions of June’s participation in the violence, which is a major part of the novel. June has been raised in a culture that sanctions torture and is at perpetual war with the Colonies. She’s been singled out by the leaders of this culture, been molded by them into their perfect soldier, a soldier that will do anything for the Republic. Yes, she has qualms, and yes, she refrains from the worst of what her superiors do, but she is a participant in the violent process. In one scene, she watches a fellow soldier torture a Colonies spy in order to learn how it’s done – after all, she will have to do it herself one day. I’m glad Lu didn’t flinch from showing us this. It’s realistic and creates a compelling character arc for June.

The first thing I noticed about Legend was its typefaces: gold sans serif font for Day and black serif font for June. As a teen, I would probably have loved this. As an adult, I wasn’t as thrilled. The gold is a bit too light for comfortable reading and I always prefer serif fonts on a printed page.

It seems like the color/font switches were used to compensate for a weakness in voice differentiation. When a story is told from more than one first-person perspective, there’s always the possibility that the voices will be too similar to one another. In fact, in writing this review, I had to go back to the book to look up which character was in the gold font and which character in the black.

I would have liked to see more backstory. This is a complaint I have with a lot of dystopias that are intended to be series. Lu sets up a pretty interesting premise with the Republic versus the Colonies, but we never learn why the schism occurred. Really, that’s half the fun of a dystopia – learning what terrible thing (or things!) it was that caused humanity to be in such a sad spot. Often this is revealed in second or third books, but I always feel its lack in the first. It causes the world to feel underdeveloped, and world-building is so important in science fiction. (The Hunger Games actually never revealed this information, and it’s something I’ve had to make my peace with.)

Here I am sounding like a broken record, but I think Legend should have been written in past tense. There’s a lot of action, but it’s not a straight up action novel (there’s a lot of wallowing in prison cells, for instance), and the present tense feels forced.

With all of these criticisms, you may think I didn’t enjoy Legend, but I did, and quite a bit. It’s a good read and one I’d recommend to dystopia fans. Divergent does both action and voice a little better, but both books have the same feel (lots of action, a small but tough female protagonist, several physical tests that must be overcome, big government secrets). To its credit, Legend wraps itself up in a single volume, which I always appreciate. This is not to say there isn’t a sequel (the website for the book is “legendtheseries.com” after all), and I’ll be happy to read it once its published.