The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies—humans with extraordinary abilities—who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone…except the villains they once overthrew.
Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice—and in Nova. But Nova’s allegiance is to a villain who has the power to end them both.
My thoughts:
Marissa Meyer is definitely an “auto-buy” author. I’ve read all of her novels except for Heartless (let me know if you’ve read Heartless and your thoughts) which I hope to pick up eventually. I love her ability to take a story that gets told time and time again, like Cinderella, Snow White, The Queen of Hearts, and the stereotypical Superhero story, and turn it into something totally new.
I listened to the audiobook for this story so I could read it and clean my house at the same time, and it was a fantastic choice. It was the perfect audiobook to listen to while doing mundane chores.
My favorite thing about this entire story, which the synopsis doesn’t do a good job of describing, is that you get about 65/45 POV from Nova and Adrian. Most scenes you get to see from both their perspectives, which is incredibly interesting. This allows you to root for both sides. I thought when I started the novel I was on the Anarchist’s side, but as I got more into it I changed to the Renegades, but then I changed back. Marissa Meyer writes each POV so well that you have no choice but to root for those characters even if that means your other favorite characters are losing. She did an incredible job writing both sides of a normal superhero story and I loved it.
I also really enjoyed the unique superhero abilities the characters have. They aren’t the common “Justice League” superpowers. Nova has the ability to make others fall asleep, Adrian has the ability to draw anything he wants into existence. Other characters are just as unique, Ruby can bleed jewels and Honey has control over flying insects. It was incredibly creative and added so much to the story.
The reason I gave this a four out of five was that it wasn’t a new favorite book. While I really enjoyed this novel and had a difficult time putting it down, it wasn’t life-changing or groundbreaking. For me, it was just another Marissa Meyer book, good, but not the best book I’ve ever read. I needed more characterization from some of the minor characters. She didn’t flesh them out enough and they seemed kind of cookie cutter versions of many other characters I’d read before. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the romance, it was too fast and forced for my taste.
The plot also wasn’t really there for me. There were way too many, not scenes, but moments is maybe what I’m trying to say. Instead of a three-act structure, there were like five or six. I think if Marissa Meyer had wanted to, she could have drawn it out until a trilogy instead of a duology and been able to work more on the individual moments instead of trying to make all of the scenes connect in one novel and maybe this would have helped with the romance to make it more angsty and drawn out.
All in all, I really enjoyed Renegades by Marissa Meyer, I thought that it was very entertaining and would highly recommend it to anyone who liked her previous books. I’m super excited for the second novel in this series that comes out Fall 2018! It’s on my most anticipated 2018 list for sure!
Catch you guys next time!
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