I received an ARC of Prodigy from Marie Lu’s lovely publicist at the 2012 San Diego Comic Con. It was a little difficult to get and I waited in the wrong line a few times but eventually it was in my hands and I’m so glad I got it. Here is the synopsis from its Goodreads page:
June and Day arrive in Vegas just as the unthinkable happens: the Elector Primo dies, and his son Anden takes his place. With the Republic edging closer to chaos, the two join a group of Patriot rebels eager to help Day rescue his brother and offer passage to the Colonies. They have only one request—June and Day must assassinate the new Elector.
It’s their chance to change the nation, to give voice to a people silenced for too long.
But as June realizes this Elector is nothing like his father, she’s haunted by the choice ahead. What if Anden is a new beginning? What if revolution must be more than loss and vengeance, anger and blood—what if the Patriots are wrong?
I loved this book! I liked even more than I liked Legend. There’s this great trend that I’m noticing of the sequels being even better than the originals. I noticed it with Insurgent (Divergent #2) and with Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2). I think it’s because in the first book of any series you have the heaviness of establishing the characters, the setting, the plot, and the conflict. In the second book the author only has to continue evolving these things so the story can be more dense with many more layers. That’s exactly what Marie Lu did with this awesome sequel.
The story takes Day and June to Las Vegas, another stronghold city of the Republic. Las Vegas is a favorite vacation spot of mine and it was interesting to picture all of the glitzy and glammy hotels on the strip turned into army bases and barracks. The story takes off from there and any more is a plot point I don’t want to spoil! About fifty pages into the book I was worried that I had everything figured out… sometimes YA fiction novels (and I promise I’m not just being a hater!) tend to get predictable, but I was really wrong about this one. I truly had no idea who to trust until the very end… and boy, the ending. I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about it. Emotional. That’s all I can say!
One of my favorite quotes from Prodigy: “They’re just the words of a boy in the heat of the moment.”
