Life Before Legend

Two twelve-year-olds live on opposite sides of the Republic of America, and neither knows the other exists. June starts her first day at Drake University as the youngest cadet the school has ever admitted. She is a prodigy, and the Republic expects a great deal from her.

Day has no such expectations placed on him. In the Lake sector he scrounges for food among the slums, and staying alive is the whole of his daily work.

The book gathers two original stories, one for each child, set before the events of the Legend series. It is a short prequel of roughly 44 to 48 pages, first released as a digital-only ebook in early 2013.

The setting is a flooded, divided future Los Angeles in which a single test decides what becomes of a person. The stories work as a quick way into that world, though they land harder after Legend, once the reader knows what June and Day grow into. The reading is brief and dystopian, split between a privileged start and a hungry one.