The Art of Legend is the third and final book in the War Arts Saga by Wesley Chu. It picks up several years after the end of the previous book, The Art of Destiny, with Jian and Taishi now living in Vauzan under assumed names and identities with the rest of their friends. Everything seems fine until the forces of Caobiu led by Sunri attack the city in an attempt to bring the Duke under her sway as Empress. Now Jian is faced with actually stepping up to the plate as the hero of the Tiandi religion, even if he really doesn’t feel like he is one. Taishi just wants to do everything she can to protect the boy even if that means preventing him from stepping up. At the same time Sali is working on gaining friends and making alliances for the rebel Nezra that have come under the leadership of her and her sister. Something potentially complicated when they attack a mining prison in order to acquire the ore being mined. Qisami, the former shadowkill, was sentenced to this mining prison after her previous misadventures with Sunri and the betrayal of her old unit. Now she is determined to use this opportunity to escape as she really wants revenge on Sunri.
This whole series is rather entertaining as it really just takes the idea of being the chosen one and turns it on its head in order to see what would actually happen in such a situation. Seeing how that supposed prophecy finally plays out is interesting as it continues that theme of it not being what it should be while also somewhat fulfilling the prophecy as well. All I can really say there is that it will not be even remotely close to what you were expecting, which is only to be expected considering the main theme of the series overall. I did enjoy seeing how the characters have changed since the beginning as Jian is no longer that rather arrogant and puffed up teenager that he was. The young man we meet at the beginning of this book I could picture being the hero rather easily. Something that I found intriguing is how there were multiple storylines, one for each of our four narrators, that seemed to be mostly unrelated except for Jian and Taishi. In this book though it all finally comes together and I must admit that I was not expecting a lot of it or for how it would all be related at the end. It ended up being a great read and one that really made you think about the nature of prophecies and the ability to predict the future. I am happy giving this book 4.5 out of 5 stars.
This is a fantasy novel with a heavy emphasis on the use of martial arts so if you are even remotely interested in that then you should consider trying this one. While it does feature a war I would not consider the story to be overly violent or graphic. That aspect of the story is relatively minor so the story would be fine for most readers. The story is aimed at adult readers but I would consider it fine for older teenagers and young adults as well but probably not anybody younger than about fifteen or sixteen. This is the third book in the series and you will be lost if you don’t read the earlier books before reading this one. I liked the book though and hope you will consider trying it out. If you do feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.