Exclusive preview: Marie Lu plunges readers back into Legend with Rebel
The wait has been long, but Marie Lu is finally bringing readers back to Legend.
After several years of anticipation, Lu will publish Rebel this year, with fan-favorite characters Day, June, and Eden returning to the fore. As we meet them, top student and brilliant inventor Eden has been living in the shadow of his brother, Daniel “Day” Wing, for years, while Day, the boy from the streets who led a revolution that saved the Republic of America, is no longer the same young man who was once a national hero. These days he’d rather hide out from the world and leave his past behind. All that matters to him now is keeping Eden safe ― even if that also means giving up June, the great love of his life. In Rebel, Lu traces the brothers’ struggle to accept who they’ve each become since their time in the Republic, as a new danger creeps into the distance that’s grown between them.
Of course, Rebel arrives after the supposed ending of Lu’s Legend trilogy. “By far the question I’m asked most frequently is what happens after the original Legend trilogy’s ending, which I’d left fairly open,” Lu tells EW. “While I always knew there was a separate book spinning that involved Antarctica and the aftermath of Legend’s events, it took me a while to find that story. I wanted it to satisfy the trilogy’s readers, something that answers all of the questions they’ve had over the years. Who ends up together? Is there a happy ending for Day, June, Eden, and others? How do you heal after a war? It turned out to be a very emotional and nostalgic book for me to write.”
Lu has exclusively shared the cover for Rebel, which you can see below, and sheds some light on the thinking behind it. “I knew this book’s cover would be a challenge ― not only did it need to match the original trilogy’s style, it also needed to be able to stand on its own,” she explains. “But the instant my editor showed me the cover treatment, I knew it was perfect. So much of this book is about different kinds of strength and weakness, so I love the pairing of something fragile, like a butterfly, with something sharp and strong, like metal. I think it fits the story perfectly.”
Rebel publishes Oct. 1, and is available for pre-order.
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