v2.
After rereading Caraval, I didn't expect much going back into Legendary. I was mildly curious about the threads the story opened at the end of the first book but since I didn't love it, I expected mostly the same from this book.
I was very pleasantly surprised. The first third to maybe half weren't great. It was a bit maddening to have one sister forget it's a game in the first book and the other sister deny that it's real in the second book. But once she gets over that, the deeper worldbuilding is more than interesting, it's intriguing even knowing a little how it will play out. I remembered much less of this book. Mainly, I only remembered that Tella puts herself in a card and it upsets Dante. So I knew all along Dante was Legend, though not much else. That knowledge seemed to deepen the scenes with him and Tella, letting them resonate more than they did in my first reading where I was trying to figure things out.
The one annoying bit in the second half was that it kept repeating the choice of Jacks or Legend almost as if it was a litany. Perhaps it wouldn't have annoyed me quite so much if I didn't know which she would choose. But the stakes had been well established, they didn't need to be reinforced again, and again…and again.
That being said, I have greater appreciation for this book the second time around. The story threads are intricately woven and the characters are emotionally resonant in a way I enjoed.
v1.
From the first page, I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy Legendary. I really didn't like Donatella in the first book, so I wasn't sure what I'd do with a whole book from her point of view. Like Caraval, however, the story is carried by the supporting players. Jacks and Dante, and even Julian a bit, kept me engaged. Donatella could have died along the way and as long as there was someone else to pick up the story, I'd have kept reading.
My biggest annoyance with Tella is that she's one of those characters who decides things and the refuses to consider anything else, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary. It took her far too long to accept that the game was real. Everyone kept telling her and she kept experiencing these things and then dismissing everything she was experiencing. And that quality of being obtuse drives the whole book which is annoying.
Also, her whole thing with fate bothered me. She thinks she's destined to unrequited love because she turned over a card once when she was six or seven? That is ridiculously unsubstantial to then influence her choices. It's a bit refreshing that Dante finally tells her she's ridiculous because she's making choices and her choices are creating the life she says she's fated to. She's spent years making choices based on a stupid assumption. And she runs away before she gets all the information in a few scenes which is just stupid, especially in a game where you need all the clues and information you can gather. I get it because if she were actually as smart as people say she is then the story wouldn't have as many bumps in the road. But it's frustrating as a reader for the author to use her character being stupid to fuel the story and then have other characters tell her how smart she is.
The writing had moments that were pretty and evocative but then the sentence keeps going and going and dilutes what Garber did well. So much so that at some points I skimmed through the descriptions because there were a lot of them and I knew they wouldn't fuel the story. Which was disappointing because in many ways this is a book with a puzzle to be solved and if the reader isn't afraid of missing a clue and skips text then it's not really as intricate or layered as it could be.
But it is interesting. While Donatella is not a more interesting character, the other players in the story are and the bigger mythology is an excellent next tier to the simple game of Caravel. Legendary goes bigger and goes further and even goes deeper as one would hope.