Review: Born of Legend by Sherrilyn Kenyon

“Born of Legend was dull…”
~ Under the Covers

This is usually the part of the review where I give a blurb…but, this is book 11 (or book 9, depending on where you look, if you understand this, please let me know ‘cos I don’t get it!) I am not going to go into an in depth blurb. I’m pretty sure if you have got this far you don’t need one. If you are new to this series don’t bother reading any further, this is a series you need to read in order, so check out my review of the first book instead Born of Night.

So back on track, Born of Legend tells the story of Julian. That’s right our beloved Nykkirian’s evil twin. Or supposedly evil twin. Maybe there is more to Julian’s character than we originally thought, in this book we get to find out.

You can already see I have low balled this book, so I have decided to give it to you straight; I was bored out of my mind reading this book. I’m surprised I even finished it and it had me reconsidering following this series as much as I really love some of the earlier books. Born of Legend was dull and went along these lines:

Julian: Woe is me, everyone hates me and has tortured me in some way, even the guys who everyone loves, maybe I am evil.
Ushara: My poor Julian, I love Julian, his family are bastards.
Julian: I don’t deserve happiness. Everyone was mean to me, my new friends are better off without me.
Ushara: My poor Julian, I love Julie, his family are bastards
Julian: I still don’t deserve happiness, I think I will perform some stupid deed of self sacrifice.

*rinse and repeat for 500 pages*

It was driving me mad, it felt like I was reading the same twenty pages over and over and over and over and over again. Annoying right? And those twenty pages were of Julian reflecting on how much his family hate him and the horrible things they did, his love for Ushara, how he isn’t good enough for her and finally his contemplation of doing some idiotic self sacrificing deed that, if it were anyone else, would kill them.

I realise that Kenyon has a certain style and enjoys inflicting sadistic torture on her heroes, it wouldn’t be a Kenyon book without it, but I found this whole book intensely irritating, slow and repetitive and it was mainly because of Julian’s character. I am trying desperately to find something I did like about this book, but I am struggling I felt like this was more of an endurance trial rather than an enjoyable read.

I’m still considering whether or not I will continue on with this series, at the moment I am inclined towards no, but I did really enjoy some of the earlier books. But maybe that’s the problem, perhaps this series has gone on for too long, it’s beginning to feel stagnant, especially as Kenyon’s characters are basically all the same person, just crammed into a different body each time. With that being the case boredom was bound to set in at some time and Born of Legend appears to be my threshold.