Legendary is the sequel to Caraval and follows the story of Donatella as she plays the game of Caraval. This time, however, the game is apparently real and the stakes are even higher.
I will say that I prefer Tella’s point of view over Scarlett’s. That probably has something to do with the fact that throughout the entire book Tella feels as if no one is going to ever save her or be there for her with the exception of her sister. When she was little, Tella found her mothers all powerful tarot cards and flipped over the Prince of Hearts card. If dealt this card, you will never find love that is reciprocated. In order to protect herself, Tella vows to never fall in love. So by the time the events in Legendary happen, she has fully accepted the fact that she will never have a true knight in shining armor to save her. That’s not to say that there weren’t moments where she was saved by a man, but for the most part, she acted as independently as she could.
I also preferred the setting of this one over the other, mainly because it’s not set on Legend’s private island but in the capital city. This made it seem more realistic to me which I enjoy more than some very over the top magical place.
A couple of things that I didn’t like about the book were that it was way too predictable and that it had the typical love triangle that a lot of YA books tend to have. Unlike in Caraval, we weren’t given a whole lot of choices on who Legendary could be, which is weird because the entire plot of the book revolves around who he is. There weren’t nearly as many twists and turns like the first one, which meant that the reader wasn’t kept on their toes the entire time. While the love triangle was better than most, there was little reason for it as far as I could tell. Maybe that is just me being tired of them though.
Overall, I would give this book a 4/5 star rating. There were a lot of definite improvements from the first one and Finale is shaping up to be a very interesting book. Hopefully, the author brings back all the twists from Caraval.
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