Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Publication Date: November 7, 2017
Pages: 556
Format: Hardcover/Own
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.
Review: I wasn't super sure about this book going into it. I'm not really big on the superhero/villain stuff and haven't read much with this plot idea. I did come to enjoy Renegades though. It was really interesting. So we have the Renegades (the "good guys") and the Anarchists (the "bad guys"). Our two main characters are Nova, an Anarchist and Adrian, a Renegade.
So Nova hates the Renegades for many reasons. They baby the population and practically do everything for them. They also promise to protect a lot of people and then don't. This reason in particular is one of the big ones for Nova. The Renegades were supposed to protect her family when she was younger from a gang attack. but they didn't and the rest of her family was killed by a gang. She holds in a lot of resentment for the Renegades because of this. She despises them even more because her Uncle, who just happens to be the leader of the Anarchists, Ace Anarchy, was also killed by the Renegades (or so we think). Its not enough she lost her family because of the Renegades failing to do their job, but then what they do to Uncle Ace? Yeah. Nova is not the happiest person and feels like she has every right to want the Renegades dead and removed from power.
Adrian is the adopted son of 2 of the leaders of the Renegades. He's also the biological son of one of the original Renegades, who was killed under some mysterious circumstances in his childhood. The death of his mother, is one of the reasons he hates the Anarchists. He's pretty sure they killed her somehow but he can't piece everything together about it. And something Nova says (as the Anarchist, Nightmare) brings all this back to the surface for him. He has a big secret though, he's the rogue prodigy called the Sentinel whose claiming to do certain things for the Renegades, but also following his own path instead of just being his regular prodigy self, Sketch. He wants to find out what Nightmare knows that could help him find out more about his moms death.
I thought both of these characters were interesting. We see Nova try out to be a Renegade since no one knows she's Nightmare, and ends up on Adrian's team of Renegades. But I think they both get more than they bargained for with this. Nova starts to feel a bit soft towards Adrian despite him being a Renegade. She kinda even likes him. And Adrian definitely likes Nova, but probably wouldn't if he knew who she actually was. But throughout her working with them and doing missions with them, she comes to not only learn a lot more about the Renegades that could help the Anarchists, she also learns more about Adrian and how he kinda connects to her life more than she thought. Nova finds out that her family's apartment was on his moms "patrol route." So it would have been her that didn't actually show up to help save her family. But she learns about his moms suspicious death and tries finding out more about what Anarchist supposedly killed her and how. They also don't realize it, but they both are hiding secrets about who they truly are. I also kinda like the relationship aspect of this. Its definitely something not rushed and only kinda introduced, but I would definitely like to see it progress further.
The big issue I had with this is it was slow in a number of parts. Sure there were some action packed chapters, but there was also a fair number of slow chapters. Chapters that only really had talking with other characters, or included small bits of info to move the story forward. There were definitely a few spots I kinda glossed over some descriptions or some vague talking that held no meaning. While I like background, and pieces that fill in certain parts of the story, I felt like some of the talking and describing scenes could have been done without since they didn't contribute as much. We could have easily made the book 400-450 pages instead of 556 instead and still got all the stuff we needed with the story. That honestly was my biggest gripe.
I did like that this book had representation in it, and it wasn't like randomly inserted, or talked about once and never spoke of again. Adrian's adoptive parents are a gay couple. He has two dads and its super cool. The way they are talked about its like they have been together forever and not just randomly forced together. They are a nice, balanced couple and seem to work well together and are a great match. We also get a disabled character, who I think is Oscar or Smokescreen. He uses a cane because he can't completely walk like everyone else. Even though he's disabled, his particular power allows him to be incredibly useful without his issue getting in the way. I also think it was great to show that disabled people could join the Renegades as well, and that they didn't have to have a perfectly working body to do it.
The ending definitely surprised me. I was no expecting us to shown that a certain person seemed to be still alive and orchestrating things behind the scenes. So this has me all kinda of curious about how said person survived and more about the bigger plan. I'm also thinking that Nova and Adrian will actually be working on the same side at some point because of what the council is hinting at. Taking away prodigies powers if they won't work with the Renegades. But they are claiming they don't wanna be the Anarchists. Isn't doing something like that being EXACTLY like them. I feel like this particular revelation, that the council is working on something to do that will push Nova and Adrian together to stop that from happening. Despite Adrian being a Renegade, I don't feel like he wants that to happen.
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