Champion by Marie Lu

He is a Legend.

She is a Prodigy.

Who will be Champion? 

June and Day have sacrificed so much for the people of the Republic—and each other—and now their country is on the brink of a new existence. June is back in the good graces of the Republic, working within the government’s elite circles as Princeps-Elect, while Day has been assigned a high-level military position. 

But neither could have predicted the circumstances that will reunite them: just when a peace treaty is imminent, a plague outbreak causes panic in the Colonies, and war threatens the Republic’s border cities. This new strain of plague is deadlier than ever, and June is the only one who knows the key to her country’s defense. But saving the lives of thousands will mean asking the one she loves to give up everything. 

With heart-pounding action and suspense, Marie Lu’s bestselling trilogy draws to a stunning conclusion.


Rating: 3 Stars

I just realized that the Legend trilogy is the first one I started and finished this 2016!!

                                                

I’m trying to read more than last year and enjoy the reading experience to its fullest (or at least don’t get too pissed off, even if that’s kind of impossible for me), and Legend was a good choice perfect for a fast reading, yet not devoid of any meaning or depth (although yes, the clichés and a few problems prevail throughout the three books).

I found the first book, Legend, to be an entertaining and fast-paced book, Prodigy surprised me with the depth of some of its characters and the political schemes. Champion was pretty decent, but it lacked something that a series finale should have and I actually preferred the second one, Prodigy, to this one.

                               

The book starts eight months after the end of Prodigy, with Day hiding his illness from June in order to protect her, and June studying to become the next Princeps.

Now, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Day in the last two books, not that I hated him but the way he treated June always rubbed me in the wrong way. For me the romance always felt very one-sided, Day had friends and a family (ok, now his brother Eden) he had an entire country loving him and it was clear from their interactions that, although he liked June, she wasn’t exactly his top priority.

But the thing is, June has no one left. Her only family is gone, she has no friends and the only person she has now is Day. From the last book and to Champion, June’s life was devoted to Day’s, everything she did was related to him somehow; her main plot at the beginning of this book is to convince Day to let the Republic test Eden so they can find a cure to a new illness. Then she has to deal with learning that Day has a brain tumor and is dying. All of her plot points and goals are directly related to him, she has nothing that it’s hers and hers alone like Day does.

Her support from the people comes because she’s Day’s girlfriend, her position in the senate is such because she has influence on Day, when she later becomes sort of friends with Tess it’s because they have Day in common and talk mostly about him. Everything in her life revolves around him, and I was saddened to see such a promising character being reduced to this sort of prop to lift Day up and make him one of the most especial people on the planet for no reason at all. It didn’t help with my dislike for the guy, either.

I think that, when it comes to series enders there are different kinds of people.

1.You’ve got the ones who want a happily ever after to every single character and are disappointed otherwise.

2.You’ve got people who want happy endings to some, and not so much to others.

3.Then there are the rare assholes such as myself who want the series to go with a BANG, quite literally actually, and want to see pain and suffering. We want to have our hearts ripped. This doesn’t happen here.

Something I found very disappointed (and that I’m sure most people won’t agree with) was that Day didn’t die. I mean, yeah it would have sucked if he did, but we ended last book with the promise of his imminent death. I was expecting something. It’s the series’ ending, we are bound to have a death or two, right?

Nope.

Not only does Day survive an impossible to operate brain tumor, two shots to the effing torso and massive blood loss, but he also gets to live happily ever after with fame, fortune and tons of chicks throwing themselves at his feet. While June gets just a really, really crappy life because she gets, of course, hung up on the first boyfriend she had when she was fifteen and who was with for less than a month or so. How is that freaking fair?!

I hated how June was treated here, I know that some people will see this storyline and be happy that she waited, that she never settled down and kept hoping for her true love to finally come back to her.

I’m not one of those people.

I wanted death, heartbreak and sorrow. I could imagine Day dying (because let’s face it, in real life he would have died real fast) and June grieving him but eventually moving on from that loss, because whether we want to or not, life goes on.

She could carry out her duties as a soldier and keep her nation safe, just as she has always wanted. She could have gotten married, or not but it could have been her choice. Her relationship with Anden showed a lot of promise, he wasn’t just someone who loved June, he also wanted what was best for her even if that meant sacrificing something himself. I was rooting for them to get together and then for June and Day to meet again those ten years later, each having moved on with their lives and being happy (I gotta tell you, I was sure June was going to be all hopeful to meet him and she’d find him with a wife and kids or something, now that would have sucked).

None of that ever happened. It hurt me to see June sacrificing her own happiness for Day, because she knew that he was still hurt due to the death of his family and she respected him not to pursue a relationship with him, but then Day leads her on and tells her that he loves her, only to ditch her after sex because he just “can’t forgive her for what happened to his family”. Day can only think about his feelings and how bad he has gotten things in life, but he doesn’t care whether he hurts June. What kind of relationship is that?

The action scenes were good, as they always are in Marie Lu’s books, but the plot fell a little flat. The first two had much more intrigue and several plots happening at once, this one was the illness and colonies attacking but not much else. I felt underwhelmed with it.

To sum up, Champion was not a terrible book or a crappy ending to the Legend Series, but it was disappointing in the treatment of June’s character and the resolution to the overall story.