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Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Young adult

Legendborn

Debut

by Tracy Deonn

Excellent choice

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Quick take

A mysterious society. A dangerous demon. A whole lot of magic. This is a modern-day feminist take on Arthurian legend.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Feminist

    Feminist

  • Illustrated icon, Magical

    Magical

  • Illustrated icon, Based_on_a_Classic

    Based on a classic

Synopsis

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.

A flying demon feeding on human energies.

A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.

And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.

The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.

She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.

Free sample

Get en early look from the first pages of Legendborn.

Legendborn

Prologue

The police officer's body goes blurry, then sharpens again.

I don’t stare at him directly. I can’t really focus on one thing in this room, but when I do look, his face shimmers.

His badge, the rectangular nameplate, his tie clip? All the little metal details on his chest ripple and shine like loose silver change at the bottom of a fountain. Nothing about him appears solid. Nothing about him feels real.

I don’t think about that, though. I can’t.

Besides, everything looks otherworldly when you’ve been crying for three hours straight.

The police officer and nurse brought me and my father into a tiny mint-green room. Now they sit on the other side of the table. They say they are “explaining the situation” to us. These people don’t feel real, but neither does “the situation” they keep explaining.

I don’t cry for my mother’s death. Or for myself. I cry because these strangers in the hospital—the nurse, the doctor, the police officer—don’t know my mother, and yet they were closest to her when she died. And when your people die, you have to listen to strangers speak your nightmare into existence.

“We found her on Route 70 around eight,” the police officer says. The air conditioner kicks on. The sharp scents of hospital-grade hand soap and floor cleaner blow across our faces.

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Why I love it

We’ll get this out of the way upfront: I, an author of an Arthurian retelling, love Arthurian stories. Give me your noble kings, your star-crossed lovers, your wild magic supporting and subverting Camelot’s rule of law. But…I get tired of everything being about a sword. I get tired of the women in the narrative orbiting around men, waiting until the story needs a victim or a villain. I get tired of retellings that add nothing new.

As both a lover and a harsh critic of Arthuriana, you can trust me when I say I was absolutely blown away by Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn. The book follows Bree, a girl whose history has been rewritten with loss, whose heart has been forged in anger and pain and hope. After witnessing a shocking act of magic she was never supposed to remember, Bree embarks upon a quest to uncover the secrets of a mysterious society linked to none other than King Arthur’s knights.

I love how Deonn layers the Arthurian fantasy elements onto our modern world. And all those things—the present-day setting, the mythology, the magic and love and privilege—are thought-provokingly interrogated through Bree’s eyes. Bree feels real, and more than that, Bree feels specific. She’s raw and flawed and wonderful, the perfect heroine for a book that is action-packed and epic but always emotionally intimate. I honestly think no one but Deonn could have written this book. I’m so glad she did, and I’m so jealous you get to read it for the first time.

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400+ pages
View all
My Friends
Home of the American Circus
Silver Elite
The Bombshell
Gifted & Talented
Enchantra
Oathbound
Rebel Witch
We All Live Here
Kingdom of Claw
First-Time Caller
Babylonia
The Favorites
The Thirteenth Child
Homeseeking
Most Wonderful
The Courting of Bristol Keats
Pictures of You
PS: I Hate You
The Road of Bones
Intermezzo
The Dagger and the Flame
The Wild Huntress
The Crimson Crown
Here One Moment
Phantasma
The Pairing
All the Colors of the Dark
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
The Demon of Unrest
Five Broken Blades
Real Americans
Table for Two
The Familiar
A Short Walk Through a Wide World
Just for the Summer
The Wives
A Fate Inked in Blood
The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard
The Fox Wife
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
Ready or Not
Heartless Hunter
The Women
Family Family
Ruthless Vows
Gwen & Art Are Not in Love
The Frozen River
The Future
What We Kept to Ourselves
Wellness
The Fragile Threads of Power
You, Again
Happiness Falls
Shark Heart
Love, Theoretically
The Only One Left
The First Ladies
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
Warrior Girl Unearthed
The True Love Experiment
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
Yours Truly
Hello Beautiful
I Have Some Questions for You
The Last Russian Doll
The Shards
Hell Bent
Age of Vice
A Wilderness of Stars
Babel
The Circus Train
Before I Let Go
Bloodmarked
The Last Party
Foul Lady Fortune
Sign Here
Thistlefoot
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Bronze Drum
The It Girl
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
Part of Your World
Lessons in Chemistry
The Good Left Undone
Kaikeyi
True Biz
Booth
Peach Blossom Spring
Black Cake
Will
Still Life
The Keeper of Night
The Book of Magic
The Lincoln Highway
Apples Never Fall
In Every Mirror She's Black
Damnation Spring
One Last Stop
Half Sick of Shadows
The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes
What Comes After
In a Book Club Far Away
The Four Winds
Black Buck
The City We Became
The Prophets
Legendborn
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Friends and Strangers
Evicted
The End of October
The Book of Longings
The Great Believers
Yes No Maybe So
Anna K
Red, White & Royal Blue
When the Stars Lead to You
Ninth House
The Fountains of Silence
Frankly in Love
Permanent Record
This Tender Land
The Reckless Oath We Made
The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World
The Gifted School
Free Food for Millionaires
Ask Again, Yes
All the Light We Cannot See
Sky Without Stars
Night Music
Small Fry
One Day in December
Nine Perfect Strangers
The Clockmaker's Daughter
The Great Alone
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
A Million Junes
The Nightingale
Behold the Dreamers
A Gentleman in Moscow
The Secret History
Dead Wake
Salt to the Sea
& Sons
Palace of Treason