Rebel – Marie Lu

Rebel by Marie Lu

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Rebel is the fourth book in the Legend series by Marie Lu that we didn’t know we needed. It takes place years after the events of the series and now Eden is a teen. He was so young in the first books, so it was nice to see his development and how Daniel/Day has coped with being a parent (yikes) to a teenaged boy who used to be just his brother. It was nice to revisit old characters and see how Daniel and June were growing and changing as the years went on (but also see how they reacted to one another after so many years apart.)

In the previous books, June and Day were the POV characters, but June has been replaced by Eden in this book. I liked June, so I do wish that we had been able to get inside her head more – but I understand that she was a supporting rather than main character in this book, so it makes sense that she wouldn’t have had her own POV chapters in the same way that the other two did. Sometimes I felt that Eden had too much of a chip on his shoulder to be entirely likeable – but I really enjoyed watching as Daniel and Eden struggled to talk to one another, be a family, and ultimately come to understand each other. It felt dramatic, but authentic.

The plot was really interesting because it took place in Antarctica, a location briefly visited in the previous books. The leveling system seemed so interesting and I loved getting to look more deeply at it, in all of its flaws and triumphs. It was a fantastic piece of world-building that bridged the two stories, even though they could have felt very disparate. I really enjoyed listening to the book, as the two narrators did a fantastic job bringing the story to life and keeping me engaged.

The two aspects that really kept this book from being higher rated for me was the so-so villain/foe and the romance. They could have been so much better written and developed, which would have made this book even better – perhaps a five-star read. Overall, I really enjoyed it and although it wasn’t perfect I was really happy to be back in this world and learn so many new things about the places and characters that we had been introduced to in the original series. But I think the fact that I read it (as an audiobook) in less than three days speaks for itself.

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