Title: Renegades
Author: Marissa Meyer
Performer: Rebecca Soler and Dan Bittner
Length: 17 hr, 5 min, 45 sec
Series: Renegades, Book 1
Publishing Date/Publisher: 2017 by MacMillan Young Listeners
Format: eAudiobook
Review: I am a big fan of Marissa Meyer and Rebecca Soler, so I knew I simply must listen to this book in audiobook format. Soler’s performance was stellar as always, but this particular book didn’t really showcase the breadth of her talent like other books written by Marissa Meyer have. There was not a lot of character voice variance, though this was partially because the second POV was narrated by a second performer.
As for the story itself, I have to start by saying that I really enjoy Meyer’s ability to write emotional origin stories for villains. This book sort of falls in that category, though I would not compare it to Heartless or Fairest. This book is written in two POVs, and this worked really well for this particular story, because it really highlights the blur between the hero and villain narrative. Both characters are fundamentally good people with radically different experiences and ideas. This puts them at odds, and while society worships one, they demonize the other. This creates some intriguing conflicts, and leads to a lot of character development.
Despite it’s many merits, I would not say this is Meyer’s strongest book. I love the X-Men stories, and though their influence is clearly apparent in this book, I found the story dragged a bit long and at some points frustrated me. I found it very odd that the Renegades embraced Nova so completely and she so easily infiltrated their ranks. I also found some of Nova’s ideology to be a bit contradictory, and her backstory did not fully convince me that it made sense for her to so whole-heartedly despise the Renegades. The conclusion sort of surprised me, though I had already predicted some of the plot twists. It was more of the manner in which they were revealed that surprised me rather than the actual reveals themselves. Based on the ending, I am strongly considering reading the next book, however, I am in no rush and will be attacking other books in my “to read” pile first.
Reader: Bekah
Rating:
You want to read this... 