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A review by obsidian_blue
Renegades by Marissa Meyer
1.0
This one pains me a lot. I have adored The Lunar Chronicles and even though some people didn't like Meyer's standalone Queen of Hearts book, I loved "Heartless" as well. This one....that's a no from me. I just DNFed this at 27 percent or page 152. When I saw that the book went up to page 566 I just lost any urge to continue on. There are too many characters in this book with multiple names. The lack of development besides the "heroes" and "villains" characterization was sad. After the 100th information dump I threw in the white flag of surrender and decided to move onto another book.
"The Renegades" is Meyer's newest offering to the Young Adult genre. This seems to be a mash up of Justice League, Watchmen, and the Hunger Games. That's a lot of mash-up.
Apparently in this world we have the so-called Renegades (vigilantes) with super powers who ended up ruling Gatlon City. However, the villains (the Anarchists) don't want The Renegades ruling things cause free will or something. I don't get it myself. Things seemed pretty bleak there based on what little of the information dumps I could let sink into my brain.
So what I read so far is there's a secret group of heroes that don't want the Renegades to know about them, The Renegades (now considered the Renegade Council) and the Anarchists. The Anarchists are trying to take out the council. And now there is something called the Trials that they are getting involved in and I tapped the hell out at that point.
There are too many characters with multiple names. I once had a conversation with a friend who was dating a dude with three names. Our conservation went like this:
Me: What do you mean he has three names?
Friend: Well he has his government name, the name he uses at his job, and his undercover name.
Me: What the hell? First, why wouldn't he use his 'government name' at work?
Friend: Well he doesn't care for it.
Me: How is he cashing checks if he's not using the name that is on his social security card?
Friend: Oh you can use a nickname and still get checks cashed it doesn't matter it the names don't match.
Me: Since when???
Friend: Well even with that I don't like the whole undercover name thing, it sounds sketchy.
Me: What do you mean it sounds sketchy? It freaking is! Unless he's Batman he doesn't need an undercover name!
Then this whole conversation turned into us discussing Batman and who is the best Batman, but long story short she dumped the dude because he was going by three names. And when I got to the part of the story when one character was going by three separate names within a single paragraph I was done.
Nova, or Nightmare, or Insomnia (I can't with this mess) was the one who wants to kill The Renegades since she blames them for not saving her family. Yeah, let's not blame the people who sent them to murder her family. It is such a weak motivation I rolled my eyes at her.
Adrian, or Sentinel, or Sketch (shaking head in disgust) is the son of two of the Renegades. The only interesting thing about him is he has two dads. So good for Meyers for showing a family like this. Other than that I don't care.
I can't tell you anything about anyone else, the book so far has mostly focused on Nova and Adrian. Since this is a Young Adult book I am sure they are going to fall in love since Nova is going undercover to compete at the Trials. I just don't have the energy for this book right now.
The writing is not good. I don't know what possessed Meyers to have so much stuff in this first book. Based on what I found, she has the second book (this is a duology) coming out in November. Good luck to her since that is a hard pass from me. I saw a lot of DNFs for this one on Goodreads. Most people just couldn't take the constant information dumps and characters with multiple names.
The flow is not good at all. It felt like I got nowhere yesterday and I read this to the 27 percent mark. I don't know why some people think length equals quality, but it does not.
The setting of this world doesn't even make any sense. Meyer tries to set things up in the beginning with a prologue I laughed my way through, but I still had so many questions. I don't know if finishing the book would clear that up or not, but I refuse to continue reading to find out.
"The Renegades" is Meyer's newest offering to the Young Adult genre. This seems to be a mash up of Justice League, Watchmen, and the Hunger Games. That's a lot of mash-up.
Apparently in this world we have the so-called Renegades (vigilantes) with super powers who ended up ruling Gatlon City. However, the villains (the Anarchists) don't want The Renegades ruling things cause free will or something. I don't get it myself. Things seemed pretty bleak there based on what little of the information dumps I could let sink into my brain.
So what I read so far is there's a secret group of heroes that don't want the Renegades to know about them, The Renegades (now considered the Renegade Council) and the Anarchists. The Anarchists are trying to take out the council. And now there is something called the Trials that they are getting involved in and I tapped the hell out at that point.
There are too many characters with multiple names. I once had a conversation with a friend who was dating a dude with three names. Our conservation went like this:
Me: What do you mean he has three names?
Friend: Well he has his government name, the name he uses at his job, and his undercover name.
Me: What the hell? First, why wouldn't he use his 'government name' at work?
Friend: Well he doesn't care for it.
Me: How is he cashing checks if he's not using the name that is on his social security card?
Friend: Oh you can use a nickname and still get checks cashed it doesn't matter it the names don't match.
Me: Since when???
Friend: Well even with that I don't like the whole undercover name thing, it sounds sketchy.
Me: What do you mean it sounds sketchy? It freaking is! Unless he's Batman he doesn't need an undercover name!
Then this whole conversation turned into us discussing Batman and who is the best Batman, but long story short she dumped the dude because he was going by three names. And when I got to the part of the story when one character was going by three separate names within a single paragraph I was done.
Nova, or Nightmare, or Insomnia (I can't with this mess) was the one who wants to kill The Renegades since she blames them for not saving her family. Yeah, let's not blame the people who sent them to murder her family. It is such a weak motivation I rolled my eyes at her.
Adrian, or Sentinel, or Sketch (shaking head in disgust) is the son of two of the Renegades. The only interesting thing about him is he has two dads. So good for Meyers for showing a family like this. Other than that I don't care.
I can't tell you anything about anyone else, the book so far has mostly focused on Nova and Adrian. Since this is a Young Adult book I am sure they are going to fall in love since Nova is going undercover to compete at the Trials. I just don't have the energy for this book right now.
The writing is not good. I don't know what possessed Meyers to have so much stuff in this first book. Based on what I found, she has the second book (this is a duology) coming out in November. Good luck to her since that is a hard pass from me. I saw a lot of DNFs for this one on Goodreads. Most people just couldn't take the constant information dumps and characters with multiple names.
The flow is not good at all. It felt like I got nowhere yesterday and I read this to the 27 percent mark. I don't know why some people think length equals quality, but it does not.
The setting of this world doesn't even make any sense. Meyer tries to set things up in the beginning with a prologue I laughed my way through, but I still had so many questions. I don't know if finishing the book would clear that up or not, but I refuse to continue reading to find out.