“Why can’t I be like that? Why can’t I be the father who just shrugs off the love of his daughter? Why can’t I be the Lead Inquisitor who enjoys watching his pleading victims burn at the stake? Why can’t I be the one who befriends a lonely, lost girl and then casts her out? Why can’t I be the one to strike first, to hit so early and with such fury that my enemies cower before they can ever think of turning on me? What is so great about being good?”

American young adult science fiction and fantasy author

Marie Lu is an American young adult science fiction and fantasy author. She is best known for the Legend series and for several other novels aimed at younger readers. Her work includes the dystopian, militarized world of Legend, along with the Young Elites series, the Warcross series, and Batman: Nightwalker in the DC Icons series. Her writing is associated with speculative fiction, especially stories set in imagined futures and focused on conflict, power, and survival.