I recently read Savage Lands by Stacey Marie Brown and I was reminded of Legend by Marie Lu. Both novels are in dystopian settings. Savage Lands has more fantastical qualities, but both settings take place in real places, with some type of disaster happening in the future. In addition, there are many similar tropes within these two books, and reading about Brexley Kovacs from Savage Lands made me feel like I was reading about a grown-up version of June Iparis from Legend.
First, their physical descriptions are similar, as they both have dark features. Day, from Legend, says about June, “She has dark hair tied back in a high ponytail and a lean, athletic build” (Lu 103). Brexley describes herself, “My Russian and Irish roots gave me pale skin, but extremely dark and sharp features” (Brown 17), and “I was all hard angles and coolness” (Brown 33). Both female characters have dark features and have strong, lean builds, due to their military training.
Second, they both grow up in rich, military-driven families and both are orphaned. Brexley is taken in by the leader of HDF, the head government where Brexley lives, and June is taken care of by her brother, who is prominent in her government’s, the Republic’s, military. They are both described as spoiled and pampered, although Brexley and June are constantly trying to bend the rules.
When June is introduced, she is at her school’s Dean's secretary’s office for not following orders and scaling fourteen floors of a building (Lu 15). June even notes, “The Republic’s favorite little prodigy is in trouble again” (Lu 11). While Brexley likes to get an adrenaline rush by stealing supplies from trains, which go outside her city’s borders. Brexley’s first love interest, Caden, admonishes her and says, “‘I meant it, Brex, This is the last time [...] It’s far too dangerous, not to mention illegal’” (Brown 18). As seen, Brexley and June, although are in the safest positions they can be within their societies like to push the limits of where they are confined to extreme degrees.
Despite their early antics, both Brexley and June’s safe bubbles pop. Brexley’s pops when she gets captured and taken to the “place feared by the HDF soldiers more than anything. Halaház. The fae prison…” (Brown 71). Brexley quickly realizes all her training as a solider did not prepare her for the chaos of the prison and she gets called out for her privileged upbringing. One of the inmates says, “A rick, entitled, spoiled human girl” (Brown 172). Brexley even admits how ungrateful she was for the life she lived while at the HDF after adapting to the filth of the prison.
June’s bubble bursts when she realizes her government has been lying to her. While June is recruiting rebels to help Day, her love interest and the Republic's number one criminal, escape, one of the rebels mocks, “‘What a joke! Poor little rich girl’s fallen in love with Republic’s most famous criminal” (Lu 266). Both June and Brexley are forced to let go of the life they knew and adjust to the newfound horrors of their worlds.
Fortunately, both have successful escapes. June is able to free Day (Lu 294) and Brexley is able to escape Halaház (Brown 219). This is an attestation to these female characters’ growth and strength over the course of their novels.
Finally, the last trope in which I found a clear comparison is, at some point, these female characters’ wanted their love interests dead. When June believes Day killed her brother, she states about Day, “I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to [...] I make you this promise: your life is mine” (Lu 45). Brexley makes a similar proclamation at the end of the novel when her love interest, Warwick, betrays her: “Because right there, I made a promise to myself. I would kill Warwick Farkas. It was a promise I would not break” (Brown 293). These promises are so similar to each other that it is easy to see how these two female characters echo one another.
Have you read either of these books? Do you see a similarity between these characters? Have you ever found a YA character that reminds you of a NA character?
Works Cited
Brielyasmin. “Savage Lands Characters.” Staceymariebrown, 11 Mar. 2022, https://www.staceymariebrown.com/savage-lands-artwork. Accessed 26 Sept. 2022.
Brown, Stacey Marie. Savage Lands. Twisted Fairy Publishing, 2020.
Lu, Marie. Legend. Penguin Random House LLC, 2011.