Legacy and the Queen

Gr 6 Up–Legacy Petrin loves tennis. With her beat-up racket and worn old tennis balls, she volleys against the orphanage wall in the early hours before she helps her father, the orphanage manager, feed and care for the smaller children. Though her dad begs her to give up her tennis dreams, her best friend pushes her to do more. When the High Consul of the fictional country Nova announces an open competition for the disadvantaged children in the provinces, Legacy flouts her father’s rules, running away and competing for a chance at a spot in the country’s elite tennis academy. When Legacy wins the tournament, she finds herself in an unkind school where everyone is out for their own personal gain. You see, tennis is not just a sport in Nova—it is a conduit for magic called “grana,” which tennis players can manifest to affect the environment. If Legacy wants to succeed, she has to find her grana, navigate the dicey social scene, and not be killed by the mythical monster who is her unconventional training partner. This is an ambitious crossover between fantasy, dystopian, and sports fiction, like a tennis-themed mash-up of Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” series and Leigh Bardugo’s “Grisha” trilogy. Once the intrigue picks up around the quarter mark, the novel becomes an easy read. Still, it tries to accomplish much in a short page count, with mixed success.