Review: Legendary

Legendary by Stephanie Garber

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Update: Alrighty, so the author DID in fact announce that there will be a third book to this story, thank God. So all my very conflicted feelings that I speak about below are no longer an issue and this book is able to maintain the 5 star rating I so badly wanted to give it. Now that I can confirm that this is not a 2-book work of literary torture I am able to highly recommend the continuance of the Caraval story. Yay!! Read On!

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Ok, so my thoughts on this book are sort of stuck in a place of limbo right now. It really comes down to whether this book will truly be the stories conclusion as it was initially planned or if it is now intended to be a middle installment to a trilogy/series. On it's own this book is every bit as magical and enchanting as Caraval. Ms Garber truly has a gift for taking her readers to her world where adventure, romance, and magic radiate of the pages...BUT...! As fun and exciting as this book was it would still be nothing short of infuriating if it truly is meant to be any kind of conclusion. As of right now I'm going to base my review on the assumption that there is more to come, I haven't been able to find any mention or suggestion that a third installment but who knows. That being said, if it turns out this truly was meant to be the conclusion to the overall story started in Caraval, I'd be forced to drop my rating considerably. There's just too much left by the time the reader comes to Legendry's final page. A quick rundown of this book. There's another edition of Caraval going down although it's not as vital to the plot as the first game was, there's a maternal scavenger hunt, much like her sister Scarlett, Tella finds herself playing Legend's game, creating serious romantic tension with one of the games actors, as well as picking up her own 3rd party fiancé. There's also a seriously problematic Tarot(ish) deck made up by demigod like characters who are all appear to be created by combining unhealthy levels of narcissism and sociopathy. Other stuff happens. Honestly, so much of how I feel about all the various storylines is dependent on the need for a third book (assuming an additional book would come with the gift of resolution.) Too much of what happens ends up feeling pointless without the satisfaction of some kind of cohesive resolution to pretty much any or better yet all the main plots, subplots, mysterious backstories that just stayed mysterious, &the character relationships that went down through out these books. As it stands right now we are left with … nothing. Scarlet-Julian=??? Tella-Dante=??? Julian-Dante=??? Scarlet-Nicolas=??? Why are you even back, Nicolas?=??? Comatose prodigal bandit mother=I can't even Legend/Fates/Return of the heir-??? I assume you all are seeing the problem here. All the beautiful writing a world building in the world can't erase the pointlessness of a story that's feels so unfinished it wouldn't even qualify as anti-climactic. The idea of that makes me pretty grumpy. Then again a third book might be announced tomorrow and *poof* all my discontent would vanish. I was able to enjoy Caraval so much more for that exact reason. It was pretty vague in its ending but I knew there was more story on the way so I didn't worry on that but now it's like quadruple levels of vague and I'm just over here in my 5-star/angry book review limbo.



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