Once upon a time, a girl had a father, a prince, a society of friends. Then they betrayed her, and she destroyed them all…
The Rose Society by Marie Lu is the sequel to the highly acclaimed and really damn awesome The Young Elites, the story of children who are stricken with a blood fever and come out the other side maimed, but gifted with incredible powers.
The story picks up where we last left Adelina Amouteru, now known and feared as the White Wolf – and she’s got her heart set on revenge. Gathering her own team of Young Elites, she moves to strike down the Inquisition Axis who tried to kill her in the past.
But there is a darkness inside her that keeps growing – and it’s so hard to cling to the good when your very existence roots itself in evil.
The Rose Society is absolutely awesome. Everyone and their mother by now knows that I loved The Young Elites. Very much. And it is always such a delight when a sequel is everything you wanted and more.
Somehow, The Rose Society manages to be darker than The Young Elites – which is extremely impressive.
The emotive and incredibly descriptive narrative follows Adelina into her incredible troubled head space, as she slowly becomes more and more twisted due to her abilities. You feel Adelina’s pain and despair throughout the entire novel, and although you’re troubled by her decisions, Marie Lu’s incredible writing lets you sympathise and understand her entirely.
Your morals and emotions are constantly pushed, torn between despairing for Adelina and how the Daggers have cast her out, to being so frustrated that her anger and darkness are only making matters worse. You feel genuinely as torn as she does about turning against them and fighting them, about her glimmer of hope that things could be okay again – but knowing deep down they won’t be.
This book also explores more of this incredible world Lu has built – there are more Young Elites in this book joining Adelina, all of whom are absolutely wonderful, shelled out characters who are rich and full of life and story without engulfing the main plot. They have these absolutely fascinating, unique personas and these fantastic new powers – everything is just so original and wonderfully crafted.
I’m so excited to see more of these new Elites and explore their relationships – and of course, I’m always excited to see the old Elites and the Daggers – even if I’m so utterly torn in how I feel about them.
And, finally, the end revelation is absolutely damn perfect for a middle arc in a series – it doesn’t leave on an irritating cliffhanger – but it has left us with an intense revelation which makes us desperate for the next part.
Overall, The Rose Society is perfect. It’s dark, gritty, edge-of-your-seat action and drama throughout most of the novel. This beautiful fantasy world is built with incredible narrative and wonderful characters that are put together masterfully by Marie Lu. It pulls no punches, with a narrative that makes you flinch and yet yearn for more of this action filled world. Watching the main character descend into a dark, villainous headspace, feeding the darkness in her is troubling, and yet you feel desperate for more, unable to turn away from what Adelina is becoming.
I honestly could not recommend this series enough, and I am beyond excited for the release of “The Midnight Star.”
Fare thee well,
Fran