Renegades by Marissa Meyer

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.

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Overall, I loved this book and this series. Y’all know that Marissa Meyer is one of my favorites. She does such a phenomenal job with fractured fairytales, plus odd hooks and thrilling executions. While I’m not a superhero person myself, her skill in world-building and plotting translated immensely well to this narrative. I do think these books had more flaws than The Lunar Chronicles, her debut series, but still adored them overall. I’d been saving this series for a rainy—or in my case, snowy—day when I needed something to entirely absorb me and sweep me off my feet, and it delivered.

PLOT

The plot centers on two main narrators, Nova and Adrian, each on separate sides of the Renegades (heroes) vs. Anarchists (villains) battle. The Renegades operate by a strict code, but neglect that this code fails and that their own organization can be just as corrupt. The Anarchists take more glee in wreaking havoc, but also are fighting against Renegades because of their belief that no concentrated group (a council of the initial “founding” superheroes) should have ironclad control over the population, especially since citizens have become complacent and just assume they’ll be saved rather than taking personal responsibility for their well-being.

Will Adrian find out about Nova? Will Nova find out about Adrian? What are the Renegades planning, and what ramifications does that have on the Anarchists? Who deserves to have control over the city? Good stuff.

CHARACTERS

Nova, furious at the Renegades for not protecting her family (they were slaughtered by a gang when she was six), is hell-bent on taking down the organization from the inside, so she tries out to become one. Her power is putting people to sleep as Nightmare (her Anarchist identity), but she says her power is never having to sleep as Insomnia (her Renegades identity.) I have many thoughts on this, which I will get to in the spoilers tab. The series essentially focuses on her internal flip-flopping as she grapples with which organization—if either—is in the right. What should she be fighting for?

Then comes Aidan: the son of two of the Council superheroes, the top and iconic Renegades. His power as Sketch is that he can draw anything into existence. What his dads and the public don’t know, however, is that he can also draw other powers into existence, which he’s started to use as a vigilante called the Sentinel, taking control of situations that the Renegades don’t step into because of their “code.”

When Nova joins Adrian’s team, there is angsty romantic longing, secret identities clashing against each other, and of course, the relentless interrogation of what “justice” really means, and which group is capable of delivering it. Adrian wants to take down Nightmare. Nova wants to take down the Sentinel. Neither has either idea about the other.

While we’re normally used to a relatively standard assortment of powers across superhero books and movies, Marissa Meyer isn’t afraid to get risky with them, so the secondary characters were immensely fun to read about. I loved the creative assortment of powers and personalities in the books, which made the series really dynamic and vibrant, contributing to the all-consuming feel.

Admittedly, my one critique of the characterization is the same frustration I had with The Cruel Prince by Holly Black: for someone all about shades of gray, Nova’s decisions could be enormously polarized, swinging from black to white and back again suddenly and without meaningful transition.

PACING & PROPORTIONS

Since I’m talking fully about the first book to start, the pacing was solid: on par with the excellence I came to expect from Cinder and her previous books. Meyer has a knack for proportions of worldbuilding, plot, dialogue, and more that really let you sink into a book. After all, the best stories are ones you forget you’re reading, right?

The second book is much slower. The third is very quick without a lot of room to breathe. Marissa Meyer gets a lot of pages to work with thanks to the success of her previous series (I’m convinced that successful authors don’t get edited for length in the same way, which can be to their detriment á la Sarah J. Maas) but it doesn’t feel quite as balanced as in her previous series. For me, it was fine because I’m a quick reader but slower readers might struggle to get through the middles when the back-and-forth starts to feel repetitive.

When I’d first tried to read Renegades a few years ago, I hadn’t been in the mood for it. This time, I ultimately couldn’t put it down, even resorting to checking out an audiobook copy from the library (I’m super picky about narrators) when I wanted to go skiing but didn’t want to stop reading. There’s consistent tension and intrigue, harrowing plot twists, and pulse-pounding action. The endings of each book (okay, yeah, started talking about the series) felt larger-than-life in a way I craved. Meyer's a very satisfying writer, and I was delighted to see that quality come across so wholly in the Renegades series.

I had several issues with the plot, actually, most of which hinged on the hidden identities conflict. Scroll down to my mini-reviews — and the spoilers tab — below for the explanation. I thought fight scenes (especially in the third book) also dragged on far too long, but the big climactic moments felt so deserved and satisfying that this made up for that.

EXISTENTIAL ISH

I love a conflict that’s about A vs. B rather than good vs. evil—both sides having their own pros and cons, in which it’s up to the reader to decide which one should win. It’s all about the how they would accomplish something rather than the what (some innate quality of badness or goodness.) That’s how real life conflicts normally go, and it makes for a much richer and more complex story. Neither the Anarchists nor the Renegades are completely in the right.

Because I’m a dork, I loved the philosophical aspect of the book and the ways in which these conversations naturally unfolded over the course of the book. It’s enough to make you think and scratch that itch, but without diminishing the escapist effects of the story itself.

WRITING & WORLDBUILDING

Like I said, Marissa Meyer’s biggest strength is her worldbuilding. It’s forceful, colorful, and well-planned, meaning that try as you might, you’d struggle to poke holes in it. I can’t think of a single other author who has that sort of power (at least over my attention) which is why she’s one of about four on my auto-buy list. I know that if I buy a book from her, I will have an out-of-body experience to completely erase me from my daily life for an afternoon.

The Renegades series is part The Boys (TV), part Sky High (movie), and part Cinder—an appealing combination. It feels lush and thorough in a pleasurable way. Her writing, while detailed and exciting, fades into the background invisibly, which is a skill in and of itself. I couldn’t put it down, and I especially loved her control over chapter endings, beginnings, and transitions—so you never wanted to stop reading.

OVERALL

I love Marissa Meyer and she’s on my list of greats. I’d previously tried to read this but wasn’t in the mood, but it has all the qualities I want from a can’t-put-it-down read: absorbing worldbuilding, invisible language, compelling stakes. Her plotting is some of the best in the industry and makes 400+ pages fly (although you do have to be in the mood for a longer read.)

Not normally a superhero gal, but this was exhilarating and well proportioned. Only major flaw for me was that the hidden identity plot points felt way too convenient and close calls felt impossible, so it requires you to suspend your disbelief more so than the other books. At the end of the day, I couldn’t put down the series and devoured it within a few days, and it embodies a lot of what I love most about this author.

For fans of:

The Boys (TV); Sky High (movie); Cinder by Marissa Meyer; enemies to lovers; Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton.

A book club moment, for those of y'all who have read it. Let's discuss:

I personally thought the identities would be spoiled by the end of book two, and that book three would be all about the fallout. I was wrong. To be honest, it was really hard to believe by book two that these characters wouldn’t have figured out 1) Nova’s secret identity and 2) Adrian’s, which felt like a major flaw in the book because it made the main characters look stupid. I struggled with this plot point, and it felt like Marissa Meyer stretched believability far too thin. She definitely could have changed more details to make it less likely it would have all unraveled by then. Adrian is trying desperately to find Nightmare, his nemesis, who happens to be Nova (on his team at the Renegades, also his romantic interest.)

By book two, they find out: Insomnia has a sleep-based power. Nightmare has a sleep-based power. Insomnia is named Nova. Nightmare is named Noreen? Insomnia and Nightmare are never seen in the same place. Danna and Adrian are both put to sleep around Nova. She’s short, has the same voice, etc,.?

Both Insomnia and Nightmare are known to be taken care of by their uncles. When the Vitality Charm disappears, the Renegades know that Nightmare had to have gained access to Simon, Hugh, and Adrian’s house—um, Nova was just invited over?

The spy has to have worked in artifacts. Nova works in artifacts—and was also asking a stupidly suspicious amount about the helmet. When Danna disappears and says there’s a spy in the organization among them and the team asks who, she (or more accurately her butterflies) point to Nova, and Nova just happens to get out of it because she says “who could it be???” oh-so-believingly??

And there are so many more, to the extent that it actually got kind of ridiculous. Similarly, Adrian’s disappearances and qualities weren’t much better either. You really do have to suspend a lot of reality for this plot to work. I understand making it tense by having “close calls” but they weren’t even close calls: they were reveals. Still, while this would be a dealbreaker for any other author, Marissa Meyer makes it work.