Review: “The Young Elites” by Marie Lu

~o~Rating~o~


Short Synopsis: The Young Elites by Marie Lu is a YA Fantasy book. In this land, there was a huge epidemic the blood fever that killed off a large amount of people. The ones who survived came out of it with some kind of marking and are called malfettos. A few of those malfettos developed powers and they are called The Elites.

I have mixed feelings about the main character Adelina Amoteru (reasonably so). She’s not exactly a hero but she’s not a villain either, she’s more of an anti-hero (she actually reminded me of Elsa from Frozen in certain parts). Marie Lu herself says this was more of a villain's origin story than anything else. Adelina is unlike any main character I’ve read about (except maybe Ender Wiggin from Ender’s Game). Adelina is very aware of the fact that she is flawed in both her appearance and her personality. Her marking is her bright silver hair and because one of her eye stopped working, they had to take it out of her socket so she is missing one eye.

I love that Marie Lu created this very dark and disturbing character, but gave her enough personality where the readers can't help but sympathize with her (at-least a little bit). Adelina crosses the line between good and evil quite a few times and her sense of morality is very different from the typical YA protagonist. It’s not that she is inherently evil but more that she will do anything to protect herself. She tries to be good but she has this growing fury inside of her that she can’t get rid of. Her energy depends on the fear of others which alone warned people to stay away from her so she was pretty much doomed from the beginning. She is tired of being used and has this hunger for power which she can’t seem to quench. This book brings up the question of good vs. evil quite a few times as the line between the two get more and more unclear.

4.5 stars because the beginning was a little slow and it took me a while to get accustomed to the setting and the characters.

~o~SPOILER ALERT~o~
 
I loved how Adelina’s power developed and it’s a pretty cool power. I mean, killing someone with an illusion of pain? Terrifying but awesome.

The other characters were interesting but I didn’t connect with most of them. I liked Raffaelle but wanted more of his story which I’m hoping the later books will bring. His character proved that no one is who they appear to be because he is the one who banishes Adelina at the end (granted she killed Dante and technically Enzo).

Enzo: I honestly didn’t like him all that much but it did surprise me when he died. But at the end, we do see Maeve who can bring people back from the dead so this should be interesting.

I wanted to know more about Gemma and Lucent; they were mentioned quite a lot but we didn’t really get to witness Adelina interacting with them. There might be more of Teren than we saw in this book, but right now, I pretty much hate him. Thinking he’s some kind of savior by killing all these people, that’s what you call delusional.

Violetta is probably my favorite character since I always tend to like the sweet ones. She has protected her sister her whole life. I’m confused on why she doesn’t have a marking though, maybe it’s just really small. Or maybe her hair just turned a very similar shade to what it was before so no one noticed. Oh well…

I’m really excited to see where this is going. Adelina’s character could go in any direction.