Review: Champion

Title: Champion
Author: Marie Lu
Genre: Dystopian, Young Adult, Science fiction

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Goodreads Summary:
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.

I finally got around to finishing this series. It wasn't a bad ending, but I was disappointed.

When I started reading this series, I was hooked. Not because Legend was the best dystopian novel I'd read, or because it was particularly insightful or life-changing. It was simply addictive, and I loved the intelligent characters and the fast pace of the series. Prodigy blew my reservations about this series out of the water with its fearless twists and dramatic character growth.

Champion...I think overall Legend was a weaker book, but since I had such high expectations after Prodigy, I liked this one the least.

After that terrible cliffhanger in Prodigy, we are left wondering how things could possibly be resolved in Champion. Resolutions take their own sweet time, which is ironic considering how fast this book goes. In fact, any issues in the previous books become even more confounding and complicated, made even more so by the conflicting emotions of June and Day. Both of them must make sacrifices to save the nation, and sometimes that means hurting one person you care about in order to save the rest of them. June and Day have both grown an admirable amount since book 1, but in this book, June's sense of duty was absolutely maddening! More on that later.

I liked learning more about the world in Prodigy, and seeing how neither the Republic nor the Colonies was actually a great place to be. This pattern continues in this book, with a visit to Antarctica. I really liked the concept of a lifelong points system, and I also really liked the discussion on how to determine whether an action is good or bad. Marie Lu does a great job of showing us different societies that seem like they're out of a glossy magazine at first, but actually hide some pretty bad plumbing. This book is highly political, but instead of a lot of clever maneuvering as in Prodigy, this one is more of the dull "let's pretend Anden can actually do things even though the bureaucracy is very much in the way". It was tedious and annoying, especially after the action of the past two books.

mini rant about that ending:

JUNE ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME. Like June, I too am a terribly logical person. But even I have enough sense to realize that emotions don't follow rules. You can't just separate love and pain, and it's better to have both than have neither. Yet June is somehow convinced of the opposite. That would be good and fine if it were herself she were talking about, but she imposes her strange beliefs on Day instead. YOU DON'T GET TO MAKE THESE DECISIONS FOR OTHER PEOPLE, JUNE.

You don't just get to decide that you aren't worth someone's love or pain. You don't get to walk out of someone's life because you think it will be objectively better for them, leaving both yourself and that person devastated. And you ABSOLUTELY don't get second chances ten freaking years down the line. Ugh.

While I enjoyed the world and the fast pace, I didn't like the resolution of some of the conflicts, and I felt like a lot of complex issues became too simplified at the end. This was not a bad book by any means, but my expectations were so high that I ended up a bit disappointed.