Unbreakable by Kami Garcia Series: The Legion #1
Published by Little Brown Books for Young Readers on October 1st, 2013
Genres: Horror, Paranormal, Suspense, YA
Goodreads
I never believed in ghosts. Until one tried to kill me.
When Kennedy Waters finds her mother dead, her world begins to unravel. She doesn’t know that paranormal forces in a much darker world are the ones pulling the strings. Not until identical twins Jared and Lukas Lockhart break into Kennedy’s room and destroy a dangerous spirit sent to kill her. The brothers reveal that her mother was part of an ancient secret society responsible for protecting the world from a vengeful demon — a society whose five members were all murdered on the same night.
Now Kennedy has to take her mother’s place in the Legion if she wants to uncover the truth and stay alive. Along with new Legion members Priest and Alara, the teens race to find the only weapon that might be able to destroy the demon — battling the deadly spirits he controls every step of the way.
Suspense, romance, and the paranormal meet in this chilling urban fantasy, the first book in a new series from Kami Garcia, bestselling coauthor of the Beautiful Creatures novels.
I lowered my expectations to 0 for this book, just because I HATED Beautiful Creatures (book one, heaven knows I couldn’t finish the series), but that wasn’t low enough. Somehow this book was still a complete and total disappointment. One that has left me scratching my head and cursing like a sailor.
If you take that blurb above you’ll probably assume that Unbreakable is about a group of teenagers going all kick ass on demons and evil spirits in an effort to protect the world. You’d probably also assume that it would be a bit of a suspenseful read too, yes? WRONG! WRONG ON ALL COUNTS YOU SIMPLE PEOPLE! This book, while touching on what “The Legion” was, actually had little information about this demon fighting force. And I know that it’s the first book in a series but where there should have been bread crumbs that lead to the next in the series there was bird poo. And it was everywhere. Seriously, it lead to like 15 doors and all of them were locked. Bad analogy? Yes. Do I care? Nope!
See what I did there? How I just went off in a totally weird and unnecessary direction just because I felt like it? That is what Unbreakable did at every flipping turn! One minute there are ghost (evil spirits?) everywhere attempting to kill you and the only friends you have in this world and the next we’re confessing our love for each other?!
Seriously guys! There is a scene where they are getting shoved and boarded into a CONCRETE WALL in a basement full of creepy ghost children, and Kennedy and Boy 1 start making out. Like full on, kisses and hugs and “his chest heaved with the things left unsaid” nonsense. I don’t understand! If I’m being boarded into a concrete wall (oh and TERRIFIED of the dark) the last thing I’d be thinking about is jumping someones bones and if they will “stay with me” or “walk away upon knowing me”. I just felt like Garcia’s desire to have a romance overshadowed what was originally a decent story before Kennedy got sidetracked by a couple of pretty faces. And yes, I mean a “couple” literally! It is indeed an insta-love TRIANGLE! I’m not against love triangles or even insta-love. To be honest, I can typically read around that nonsense and still find the story underneath, but this was just too much! You’ve known these twin jr. ghostbusters for less than a week and already your obsessing over if he’ll walk away from you? Sweetheart, you are on a mission to kill an extremely powerful DEMON and save the lives of millions of people. This is what you’re thinking about? Boys?! Not the fact that you have NO combat training? Or the fact that these kids have prepped their whole lives and you’ve known for about 2 days? No. You want to obsess over boys.
I just wanted to punch her in the throat and tell the others to walk away. She wasn’t focused, she had this whole “woe is me” attitude and she was dumber than a box of hair! I can’t go into what she did exactly, but she screwed up big time TWICE! TWICE, she almost got everyone killed. But instead of learning from those mistakes, apologizing and moving on she throws a pity party. Never mind the fact that they don’t have the time or extra energy necessary for her to wallow in her worthlessness. No, that doesn’t matter, because Kennedy just lost her mom and she’s all alone and she’s so useless and blah blah blah! Death is a big deal. Death of your only parent is incomprehensible for me, but the other 4 peeps in her group had just lost their ONLY parent too, and yet they were able to push that pain aside to look at the big picture. I know Kennedy wasn’t prepped and trained like them, but having a demon try and kill you, not once, not twice not three times, but SIX FLIPPING TIMES, should have woken you up enough to make you realize that you needed to stop this.
Now the plot. Let’s talk about foreshadowing. In most instances foreshadowing is a wonderful tool that can put you on the edge of your seat. It can enhance a story to the point of overwhelming you. Garcia, does not know this. The “foreshadowing” in Unbreakable was more like a giant flashing neon sign that said “Hey! You’re going to correctly guess what’s coming, but I’m going to draw it out over 3 books because I CAN!”.
If that isn’t enough to keep you away from this monstrosity then how about this. They go into various haunted and dangerous places and the first thing out their mouths is “let’s split up”.
Seriously. They would walk in, see a ghost and immediately say “We’ll take the basement, you take the attic.” What the hell kind of logic is that?! I’ve almost been killed and now you want to split off and go into the scariest parts of these abandoned buildings?! No me gusta! If we’re splitting up I’m walking out that front door and acting like I never met you. There, we’re split up.
If it weren’t for the creepy as hell ghost I would have quit Unbreakable. But every time I was ready to hit my big shiny DNF button a creepy ghost would come up and attempt to kill Kennedy and I gave in to that hope that she would finally DIE! I actually spent most of the book like this:
But that didn’t happen, and I was met with an ending that actually made me flip back and re-read the last chapter because it was just so damn random. Long story short… DON’T DO IT! If you’re still curious, grab a library copy! TRUST ME!
