Title: Renegades
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publication Date: November 7, 2017
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Pages: 576
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//I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review//
Secret Identities. Extraordinary Powers. She wants vengeance. He wants justice.
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.
If you’ve followed my reviews for awhile, then you know I love Marissa Meyer! The Lunar Chronicles was one of the first YA series that I followed from beginning to end and Heartless is easily in my top five retellings. Combine my love of this author with my love of superhero movies (okay, really just Marvel movies) and I was SO excited when I heard about Renegades! Unfortunately, it turned out to be a little bit of a letdown.
Renegades is a heroes versus villains story. Nova is an anarchist, one of the villains, and has good reasons for being one. Not only was she born into it, but the Renegades failed her as a child when she needed them most. Adrian is a Renegade, also by birthright. I really loved both of these characters! I could totally sympathize with Nova’s reasons for seeking vengeance and wanted to see her succeed. At the same time, I really loved Adrian’s sense of moral duty, which could have easily been annoying but never reached that level, thankfully. And for you romance haters, there really isn’t much here to annoy you!
I also did enjoy the other heroes and villains, but thought that everyone aside from the main characters was kind of over-the-top one dimensional. Everyone was super good or super evil and there wasn’t much in between. For a story set in a world similar to our own, I wish the secondary characters had been a bit more believable.
Speaking of the world, I wish there had been more to it. Everything in Renegades is confined to one city and, although other cities are briefly mentioned, I never felt like I had a good idea about the world and how it came to be in its current state. Reading this book kind of felt like playing a closed world video game, to be honest. I know that Marissa Meyer is capable of incredible world building and I really hope she shows us a bit more of this world in future books because it has potential to be amazing!
Like the characters, the plot was pretty bland and predictable. Villain seeks revenge, villain finds out not everything is black and white. Honestly, the story wasn’t terrible, but I think it suffered from being way, way too drawn out. Renegades could have been about 250 pages shorter and still have accomplished everything that happened in the story. A major problem I had with this book is that, while the world isn’t very description-heavy, everything else is way too drawn out. Details I didn’t care to know are included while details that could’ve made the story better were left out.
Overall, I thought Renegades was just okay, and maybe that’s because I had such high expectations. The main characters were fantastic and the story was interesting, but the pacing was unbearably slow and the world building left a lot to be desired. There was also a ridiculous cliffhanger at the end that I’m sure a lot of people would hate! I’ll probably wait until the audiobook is available for Renegades 2. I’m still interested to see how the story continues.
