Legendary

****

4/5

Thanks to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for giving me this book to review

Legendary is the excellent sequel to Caraval which was a real page turner and kept me guessing. Maybe because after reading the previous book and expecting the unexpected but I found this one a bit more predictable. I like that we got to see more of the world and life outside the Caraval and the perceptive of someone who I feels understands the game better than Scarlett. While I am not upset by this, I was expecting a bigger time gap between the books, but it took place the day after Caraval and some of the fallout from the book.

I completely misjudged Tella in the first book as, while she is still a bit self-centred, she is so much more complex than we got from Scarlett’s point of view, showing that while Scarlett is protective of her sister, she doesn’t think much of her really. I loved Tella as she is intelligent, cunning and knows what she wants, just what I like in a main character. Scarlett is also in this book and it appears that her story is also not complete, but I had little interest in her, as she was making decisions which left me wondering what she was thinking, and either she didn’t notice or care that her sister was in trouble as she didn’t pay much attention to her. Dante was an interesting character as I could tell if he was helping and protecting Tella because of his character in the game, he truly cared about her or for some other nefarious reasons, but he did keep me guessing. Jacks was similar as I knew his plans, but I couldn’t quite figure him out.

I thought this was a duology but was pleasantly surprised to find out there is at least one more book in this series and I can’t wait to read it. I would recommend Legendary to fans of the first book Caraval.