Legend

Legend is a young adult novel by the American writer Marie Lu, published by Putnam in November 2011. It is the first book of the Legend series, followed by Prodigy, Champion and Rebel.

The novel is set in a Republic carved out of the western United States and permanently at war, with a gap between the elite districts and the slum sectors that both narrators describe from the inside. June Iparis is a prodigy from a wealthy family and a military trainee; Day is a fugitive from the poor part of the same city who steals from the Republic to keep his family alive. When June's brother Metias is killed, Day is blamed, and June goes after him, which is how the two of them end up circling each other in a city that is keeping secrets from both of them. Lu writes the book in alternating first-person chapters, so each character's account of the same events contradicts the other's, and she has said the story drew on the film Les Miserables and on her own life.

The series continues with the same two narrators, and the later books widen the story from the capital to the war on the borders.