The Young Elites (The Young Elites #1) by Marie Lu — Review

The Young Elites is Marie Lu’s most ambitious book and her most interesting failure — and by failure I mean the thing that happens when an author tries something genuinely difficult and achieves most of it, which is considerably more exciting than a safe success.

The ambitious thing: the protagonist is a villain. Not a villain who will be redeemed, not a misunderstood anti-hero on her way to good choices. Adelina Amouteru is a Young Elite — one of the children who survived a blood fever that killed their parents and left survivors with strange abilities — and she is, from the first pages, moving in a direction that the reader can see even when she can’t.

She is also completely compelling.

Adelina

Adelina has been told she is worthless her entire life — by her father, by her society, by the evidence of her own scarred face and blind eye. She has internalised enough of this to be dangerous. Her power — the ability to craft illusions — is rooted in fear, and she is never more capable than when she is in danger or in rage.

Lu writes her internal monologue with extraordinary care. Adelina knows she is capable of cruelty. She tells herself stories about it — that it’s justified, that it’s necessary, that the people she hurts deserve it — and the gap between what she tells herself and what the narrative shows is where the book lives. It is not a comfortable gap.

The World

The Renaissance-influenced Kenettran world is vividly realised. The political situation — a religious order hunting the Young Elites, a rebel group called the Dagger Society trying to protect them, a monarchy in crisis — gives Adelina enough structural material to move through without making the world too complex to track.

The supporting cast is strong. Raffaele, the most human member of the Dagger Society, is the character who sees Adelina most clearly and whose regard for her is therefore the most complicated.

The Villain Origin

This is, fundamentally, a villain origin story. Lu is watching Adelina’s choices and letting them compound. By the end of this first book, she has made several decisions that are not recoverable — not because Lu judges her for them, but because the narrative understands consequences in a way that Adelina, at this point, does not yet.

The romance thread is present but secondary. This is not a love story. It is a story about a person learning what she is, and not stopping herself.

Why YA Readers Will Love This

For readers who have ever found themselves more interested in the villain than the hero: this book exists specifically for you. Adelina’s psychology is rendered with the kind of attention usually reserved for protagonists, and reading her as a main character rather than an antagonist is genuinely disorienting in the best possible way.

For readers who loved Legend and want to see what Marie Lu does when she removes the check of a conventionally moral protagonist: the answer is this, and it is worth seeing.

For readers interested in the question of whether people are made or born cruel — and whether the answer changes how we feel about the cruelty — The Young Elites asks this seriously and does not provide easy answers.

The Rose Society and The Midnight Star complete the trilogy, and both are excellent. The ending of The Midnight Star is one of the most striking conclusions in recent YA. Start here, and stay all the way through.

Published: October 2014 · Genre: YA dark fantasy · Series: The Young Elites, Book 1

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Young Elites about? The Young Elites is set in a Renaissance-influenced world where a blood fever has left some survivors with strange abilities. Adelina Amouteru is a Young Elite whose power — crafting illusions rooted in fear — is strongest when she is in danger or in rage. The review describes it as a villain origin story: ‘Adelina is moving in a direction that the reader can see even when she can’t,’ told from inside her perspective with no promise of redemption.

What makes The Young Elites Marie Lu’s most ambitious book? The review calls it ‘Marie Lu’s most ambitious book and her most interesting failure — and by failure I mean the thing that happens when an author tries something genuinely difficult and achieves most of it, which is considerably more exciting than a safe success.’ The ambitious thing is the villain protagonist — not ‘a villain who will be redeemed, not a misunderstood anti-hero on her way to good choices’ but someone clearly moving toward something darker.

How does Lu write Adelina’s unreliable internal monologue? Lu writes Adelina’s internal monologue ‘with extraordinary care.’ Adelina tells herself stories to justify her cruelty — ’that it’s justified, that it’s necessary, that the people she hurts deserve it’ — and ’the gap between what she tells herself and what the narrative shows is where the book lives. It is not a comfortable gap.’

What is the setting of The Young Elites? The Renaissance-influenced Kenettran world is described as ‘vividly realised,’ with a political situation — a religious order hunting the Young Elites, a rebel group called the Dagger Society trying to protect them, and a monarchy in crisis — that gives Adelina enough material to move through without becoming too complex to track. Raffaele, ’the most human member of the Dagger Society,’ is singled out as the character who sees Adelina most clearly.

Is The Young Elites trilogy worth completing? The review explicitly recommends the full trilogy — The Rose Society and The Midnight Star follow, and The Midnight Star’s ending is called ‘one of the most striking conclusions in recent YA.’ The review advises ‘start here, and stay all the way through,’ positioning the accumulated weight of Adelina’s choices as something that the later books fully reckon with.

Further Reading from Authoritative Sources

• Marie Lu — Wikipedia’s Marie Lu article provides biographical and bibliographical context for the author, including the Legend series referenced in the review as a comparison point, helping readers understand her development and what The Young Elites represents within her body of work.
• Renaissance-inspired world — Wikipedia’s Italian Renaissance article contextualises the historical period that inspires The Young Elites’ world-building, helping readers understand the political, religious, and aesthetic traditions that give Kenettran society its specific texture.