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. VERDICT Bryant's byline and the unique subject matter could drum up interest. Consider as an additional purchase. --Abby Bussen, Muskego Public Library, WI

In this sports-themed fantasy debut created by Matthew in collaboration with Kobe Bryant, a girl must win a tennis tournament in order to save the orphanage run by her father and help her best friend, who faces factory work instead of school. Despite her lack of formal sports training, Legacy Petrin, 12, has enormous raw talent and drive, and earns a scholarship to a prestigious national academy founded by a former tennis champion known as the Queen. In order to succeed against her more privileged competitors, though, Legacy must make new friends and allies and master her innate magical abilities, which are shared by all great tennis players in the Republic of Nova. The tennis action takes a backseat to worldbuilding and explanations of the magic system (though the combination of magic and tennis offers wonderful concepts in the form of building endurance against things with fangs and attitude), and the plot relies on some predictable turning points. Still, the story of a young heroine who must find friends at a specialized school so that she can prove herself to her privileged critics has plenty of charm, and Legacy is a protagonist worth cheering for. Ages 13-up. (Sept.)