REVIEW: Renegades

Renegades by Marissa Meyer

Page Count: 556 pages

Release Date: November 17, 2017

My Rating: 3/5 stars

Goodreads Synopsis:

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 Review:

I went into Renegades with fairly high expectations--after all, Marissa Meyer is an amazing writer and her Lunar Chronicles series is one of my very favorites. What are my feelings after getting through the almost-600 pages of this tome? DISAPPOINTMENT.

Here is my main problem with this book: NOTHING HAPPENS. It's not badly written, it has some really cool scenes and characters, but overall, it's over 500 pages of mostly filler scenes and explanations, or action scenes that don't move the plot forward. This book was supposed to be a fast-paced, fun, awesome romp about superheros versus villains. And while it did have it's moments, overall--and I hate to say it--I found this book BORING.

While the plot and characters had a huge amount of potential, neither one fully realizes it. After almost 600 pages Adrian still seems like a supporting characters, and although I liked Nova, her stubborn, irrational hatred of the Renegades just like...doesn't really make sense? I understand that she felt betrayed by them when she was a child and then was raised by anarchists, but she's smart. She's described as intelligent and savvy and rational. It just doesn't make sense to me that she'd hold onto her wavering prejudice for so long, even after she goes undercover with the Renegades herself and becomes friends with them. Maybe if there had been more action and less repetitive description it wouldn't have been such a problem, because the plot would've been faster. But there's page after page of long inner-monologues detailing her thoughts and opinions, which never seem to change even when presented with direct evidence proving her wrong, and it gets so frustrating and honestly exhausting to read.

The end of Renegades ends on a pretty huge cliffhanger, which definitely sets up the next book and hopefully will introduce lots of action to the plot. Renegades itself seemed to be one loooong introduction to the real action on the next book. If the pacing and flow of this book was better, it had the potential to be awesome-- hopefully, book two will remedy this.