Champion (2013)
Champion is a 2013 plague book written by Marie Lu and Steven Kaplan.
The Republic that Day and June fought to change now needs them at its center. She climbs into the Elector's inner circle, close to real power for the first time; he returns to a capital that both venerates and distrusts him. A plague spreads, the Colonies mass at the border, and the war everyone dreaded finally arrives. Marie Lu closes the trilogy with her two narrators pulled between duty to a nation and loyalty to each other. Old certainties about who the enemy really is begin to give way.
Quick answers
What is Champion about?
The Republic that Day and June fought to change now needs them at its center. She climbs into the Elector's inner circle, close to real power for the first time; he returns to a capital that both venerates and distrusts him. A plague spreads, the Colonies mass at the border, and the war everyone dreaded finally arrives. Marie Lu closes the trilogy with her two narrators pulled between duty to a nation and loyalty to each other. Old certainties about who the enemy really is begin to give way.
When was Champion published?
Champion was published in 2013.
Who made Champion?
Champion was written by Marie Lu, Steven Kaplan and Mariel Stern.
Similar books
Explore Champion guides
Champion in our writing
- Companion guide: YA Dystopias: The Hunger Games and the Decade the Arena Ruled
A few thoughts on Champion
Readers who want that same all-or-nothing endgame should try Mass Effect 2, where a looming war forces hard choices and the enemy line keeps blurring. For a screen equivalent, the later Hunger Games films carry the same weight of a rebellion arriving in full and asking what victory actually costs.
YA dystopian trilogies that end in outright war
Champion pushes Day and June toward outright war between the Republic and the Colonies, the kind of ending where alliances matter more than any single victory. Mockingjay and its film version stage that same full-scale uprising, Allegiant and The Death Cure both close out their trilogies at the same scale of conflict, and Glass Sword keeps escalating a war that started out much smaller.
Standing close enough to the throne to see who really deserves it
June spends Champion inside the Elector's inner circle, closer to real power than she ever wanted to be and forced to question who actually deserves her loyalty. House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones both live in that same court, Ōoku: The Inner Chambers reworks the same tangled proximity to a throne, and The Selection turns that access into a competition of its own.
Plagues, borders, and militarized futures closing in at once
A plague spreading through Champion's Republic turns a political thriller into something closer to survival horror, with the Colonies' army waiting at the border regardless. Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed build futures around that same fusion of military control and engineered bodies, BioShock Infinite hands you a floating city just as tightly controlled, and Black Holes and Revelations and Galaxy Express 999 score the same embattled mood.
Giving up an ordinary life for a fight bigger than you
By the third book, Day and June have both given up any ordinary life for a fight neither of them chose alone. Mass Effect 2 asks its own soldiers to make that trade, The Boys turns the same sacrifice cynical and bloody, Project Hail Mary strands one person with the world's survival on their shoulders, and 20th Century Boys builds a decades-long conspiracy around that same quiet, unglamorous duty.