About the Book:

• Title: Renegades by Marissa Meyer
• Genre: YA / Fantasy
• Page Count: 563 (kindleedition)

Here’s the blurb from goodreads.com:

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 the villains who have the power to end them both.

Quick Review

A promising start to a new series by the author of the Lunar Chronicles. I really fell in love with this one. A very cool premise with a great cast of characters. I want to read book two ASAP.

Star Rating: 5 stars

Longer Thoughts

I took a weirdly long time to read this book. I loved The Lunar Chronicles and babble about the series to anyone who will let me. But as much as I liked her last novel, Heartless, it just wasn’t the same. If anything it just made me miss her other series. I was reluctant to start this series because I didn’t want to be disappointed again. But eventually I made my way over to it and I’m so glad I did.

I love how Meyer creates her own little worlds or societies that are totally different from ours but also parallel to reality, too. She creates a full city in Gatlan and characters with full backstories that you’ll want to root for and keep reading into the night to see how everything works out.

As a fan of Marvel and DC comics, it was really cool reading about all of the different super powers that various characters had. It definitely resembles the X-Men universe at its root. There’s a lot of deep thinking about whether super powers are a benefit or a disadvantage – and what kind of responsibility people with super abilities should have to society. There’s also that long standing debate about what makes someone a super hero or a villain. All of this gets hashed out and discussed throughout the story without feeling preachy or trying too hard.

Plus, guys, there’s a love story to ship. That’s all you really needed to know right? It’s good, it’s sweet and as of book one ending, nothing is resolved yet! Argh! I need more!

So that’s my take. This is a story that’s very different from the Lunar Chronicles but that also benefits from Meyer’s signature style of society building and character development. I’m very much looking forward to book two and will almost certainly be found recommending this book to everyone, perhaps too forcefully.