Always so fun when you are binge-reading/binge-watching. There are plenty of fun subsidiary characters, some of whom DIE HORRIBLY, so don’t get attached to anybody, because Sarah Rees Brennan might have them DIE HORRIBLY when you weren’t expecting it. But she is also sort of like “swoon”, and let’s face it, that is fun for all of us.ģ. The hero is brooding and tortured, and the heroine is more like “This sucks for me” than she is like “swoon”. At one point her love interest says he thought she’d rather have a weapon than a rescue, and she is impressed that he knows her so well.Ģ. She also cannot leave things alone, because she is determined to Get Answers. The heroine is an intrepid girl reporter, and she solves her own problems. Trust me, I enjoyed the hell out of these books.) Exhibit B is The Lynburn Legacy series by Sarah Rees Brennan, of which Unspoken is the first, recommended to me most recently by the marvelous Renay.ġ.

(Well, okay, I did not review those books here, because I read them around Christmas last year, and I got too busy for reviews.

Moreover, it is tremendously fun to read three fast, well-plotted stories back to back to back.Įxhibit A in my emerging viewpoint re: YA trilogies was the Curse Workers trilogy by Holly Black. Better to HAVE NONE because you only became acquainted with these characters in the first place two days ago because you are binge-reading. They do not always (or even often) have a complicated end-game with symbols and foreshadowing (ahem, Lost).Īnd if that is the case, and if you have years to think about it, you are that much more likely to get cross when the last book comes out and all your hopes and dreams are not realized. Sometimes, when you are reading something for the first time, it’s better not to have too much time to contemplate plot matters and form theories about What It All Means, because sometimes, that is not the kind of comic/book/television show the creators are creating. Some things are just better suited to bingeing. Here’s my theory: Not all fiction (be it comics, YA fantasy, television shows, whatever) benefits by anticipation between installments. If you can get all three of the volumes out of the library at once, and tear through them like a bullet train, YA fantasy trilogies are kiiiiinda the best. I have formerly griped about how everything in YA is trilogies, but I have now decided to withdraw that complaint and substitute a life policy of not starting unfinished YA trilogies, and I think that will solve the whole problem.

I’d have been for it if I’d lived in Victorian times, and I am for it now. In one of those cases of odd internet synchronicity, I have seen many unrelated people on the internet talking lately about the similarity between YA fiction as currently constituted and the three-volume novels of the Victorian era.

The lynburn legacy