The Young Elites (The Young Elites, #1) in Pick-a-Shelf

Oct 27, 2014 Lauren鈦� 💜 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult-teen-new-adult, library-has-a-copy, fantasy-science-fiction

After finishing Lu's excellent Legend trilogy, I was very excited to read whatever she wrote next and I hoped it would be as good as the Legend trilogy. And when the description for The Young Elites was released, I got pretty excited. And overall, this was a very good book. X-Men meets Assassin's Creed is the best description for the overall theme and plot. I'm a huge X-Men fan, but I've never played Assassin's Creed before. But I have always found the idea of the game intriguing and I do know e After finishing Lu's excellent Legend trilogy, I was very excited to read whatever she wrote next and I hoped it would be as good as the Legend trilogy. And when the description for The Young Elites was released, I got pretty excited. And overall, this was a very good book. X-Men meets Assassin's Creed is the best description for the overall theme and plot. I'm a huge X-Men fan, but I've never played Assassin's Creed before. But I have always found the idea of the game intriguing and I do know enough about the Assassin's Creed franchise and its premise to feel confident in my comparison. And actually, this isn't the first time something like this has been done. I read Neil Gaiman's excellent Marvel 1602 a few years ago and that was quite similar to this book in some ways. But even if I didn't like or know anything the X-Men, Marvel 1602 or Assassin's Creed, I still would have read this book. Even with those comparisons, I still found this to be a pretty original book which I really liked. The overall plot was very good and intriguing with some nice surprises in store. Given my love of history, I thoroughly enjoyed the Young Elites universe and Lu's worldbuilding. The concept of how the Young Elites/malfettos got their powers, the blood fever, is an interesting one, but I found Lu's explanation of how the blood fever gave the malfettos their powers to be a bit too vague and broad. On the flip side, she did do a good job of explaining their powers and developing them and I found the idea that they were externally marked by them to be cool. I also liked the characters a lot. And she took them in directions I wasn't expecting. She's described this book as the rise of a villain in Adelina's character. And that's a rather refreshing move. (view spoiler). I liked Adelina and I hope that she can be redeemed. I found the Inquisition to be interesting and they added a nice element to the story and I found Teren's character interesting and much more than a one note villain, though (view spoiler). Raffaele's character was probably my favorite, he was a nice counterbalance to all the other characters, (view spoiler). Enzo was pretty swoon worthy and I liked him and (view spoiler). And I found that I overall liked or was intrigued by the rest of the characters. The ending was very good and I'm excited to get my hands on The Rose Society because I really want to know what happens next. In general, I quite liked this book and I'm excited to see where Lu is heading with all this. ...more

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Nov 21, 2013 Tien rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, fantasy, own

The ending pains me sooo badly but it's such an amazing world, this deserves the 5 stars and not any less. ...more

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Nov 29, 2014 Tara rated it liked it · review of another edition

I am not in love with this book. It shocks me because I thought I would be.
My biggest problem with it was that I did not love or really like the characters. I found it hard to feel for their strife. I wanted Adelina to find somewhere to fit in and prosper, but struggled with her decision-making. She never really felt like she grew as a person. In general, All of the characters felt very static and did not seem to grow or change.
I am giving it three stars because it is a good story though. It f ...more

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