Looking for an x-men style universe where the people in power have power? This is the series for you! Sometimes we come across authors who write fantasy so well, setting up such a mesmerizing world, that is hard to not want to continue reading more. Marissa Meyer is that author for me. I loved Cinder from Lunar Chronicles and Renegades was also amazing, and I’m excited to share my thoughts on this book today. I have El, one of book blogger friends, over on the blog to share her reading experience of the book as well.
If you haven’t heard about this book already, here is the synopsis.
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.
Content Notes: Violence, Death.
Why I chose to read Renegades
Marissa Meyer’s books were a new discovery for me last year. My friend, Melanie, recommended Cinder to me, which is part of the Lunar chronicles and it was fantastic. I haven’t had a chance to finish that series but seeing other friends, including Mae (Instagram post below), made me pick up this series. Both the Lunar Chronicles and Renegades series are narrated by Rebecca Soler, one of my favorite narrators so far.
Book Discussion with El @inkandplasma
I connected with El when I started Melissa Meyer’s series – Renegades. This is a three book series starting with Renegades, Archenemies and Supernova. The story is about a girl named Nova who witnesses the death of her family when she is 6 years old and is taken in by her uncle. She has the power to make people fall asleep. The world isn’t like anything I am familiar with and since El had already read the first book while I was in the middle of it, I got some background from her. We thought it would be a nice discussion post for each of the books since this is one of her favorite series!
It is always hard to adjust to a new world, especially when it looks a lot like our own but isn’t quite the same. El, can you tell me about Gatlon city and who the renegades and anarchists are?
The anarchists and renegades are the two main ‘powered’ groups (there used to be more but now it’s just the two of them). Not everyone has powers, and it’s explained in the first book that there are two ways to develop powers: naturally, or through a traumatic event. Gatlon city was a lot like the cities we know, before. It’s a familiar set up if you know X-Men. Some people had powers, people without powers were in charge and people with powers weren’t really trusted. The difference in Renegades that makes it so interesting is that the Anarchists took over and destroyed the infrastructure (the police, the army, etc) so Gatlon city devolved into a period of lawlessness and crime where people were stealing/looting and bartering just to survive. Then the Renegades rose as a team of ‘heroes’ and overthrew the Anarchists in an epic battle. Now the Renegades run everything, and those without powers let the Renegades run shop because their powers make it easier to run and control the city and the surviving Anarchists were driven underground.
El, what do you think about Nova, our protagonist here?
I’ve always been a sucker for the morally-grey, and Nova is one of my favourite characters in a long time. I think I’m drawn to her resilience, but also her character growth. It’s definitely seen more over the series than just in Renegades so I won’t talk about anything spoilery, but Nova felt to me like a character that was constantly evolving and developing her own views even though she’s surrounded by a LOT of external pressure. Her motivations, to me at least, always seemed to make sense – even if I didn’t personally agree with them, and as a result Nova felt like a really well executed character. I never felt like she was being villainous ‘just because’ which made her an interesting, if sometimes unreliable, main character.
I am learning new things about her all the time – there is a whole struggle there (at least in Renegades) about where her loyalties lie. She is quite intelligent and losing her family and then Ace had a tremendous impact on her.
You know how you sometimes get introduced to characters and just know that they will be important? I love Max’s role. The fact that he confined to his quarters and no one seems to know his powers only ups the mystery around him, some of which Nova is able to unwrap in the first book. Did you have the same feeling about Max, El?
It’s honestly so hard to talk about Max after Renegades, because the role his character plays in the overarching series is extremely subtle in the first book. I think at the end of Renegades I was curious about him, and his powers, but more about his relationship with Adrian and how a child had gotten quarantined by the Renegades than anything else. He definitely becomes a bigger part of the story later on (and he’s so loveable I can’t even explain it), and getting more ‘screen time’ suits him – he probably ended up being my second favourite character by the end of the series and what we know of his power is so interesting and different. Though, if I could have anyone’s power, it would definitely still be Nova! If I never needed to sleep, I would be so productive. If you could pick anyone’s power from the Renegades world, which would you go for?
I’m right there with you – Nova’s power is the most appealing to me. Productivity is definitely tempting! Oh all the books I’ll be able to read and things I would be able to do! I wonder about how it would affect the body, considering we all need to sleep to function. That’s something I would love to explore in a future blog post.
What’s one thing that really draws you into this world and makes this one of your favorite series?
I talked about this a bit in my spoiler-free Renegades review on my blog, and more in my spoilery reviews of the rest of the series, but the world-building is my absolute favourite part of this series.
Superpowers can be a bit overdone, but we both said that we found this world quite different from other things we’d read and I liked the way that Marissa Meyer balanced traditional ‘superhero cliche’ with new ideas to keep it fresh.
I think the fact that the world is set in a ‘post-post-apocalypse’ world is really what drew me in. They’ve had the time of lawlessness and looting and bartering and now they’re trying to rebuild a society while those things are still raw in people’s minds. It’s a really interesting time-frame that I don’t see done a lot in books, most seem to focus on the time just after the end of the world.
I absolutely agreed. That has drawn me further into the world too. I particularly like the commentary about how flawed and fake the leaders of the superheroes are. Nova brings in the perspective of having grown up with a group that had powers but was not the one in power. It is a neat contrast from our own world and politics. We don’t have superhero-style powers but people can be in powerful positions and make decisions that other people might not agree with. We have lawlessness as well, though not to the same extent as in Gatlon city. We have police forces and I remember at one point, Nova does mention the idea of having the city rather than prodigies patrolling the city. This points to the history of the world that we have no idea about – pre-Anarchists rule. What brought that about? What ended it? We get some answers to the reasons for the end but those aren’t the focus of the story.
I definitely agree that there is a strong commentary in Renegades about power, politics and the way that leaders make decisions. I actually feel a lot like Gatlon city is a futuristic, post-disaster version of our world (plus the superpowers of course). To me, it felt like the setting was designed to be recognizable and alien all at once, and to imagine what our world would look like if those people had superpowers and not just political and financial power. The whole world felt familiar to me, from the world-building to the characters.
I felt like the whole character cast was as diverse as the powers they have, from the Italian/Filipina main character and queer parent households to a character who can be disabled and super-powered without his power being because of his disability (or worse to fix his disability). Diversity is, of course, such an important ongoing discussion in YA SFF, and it’s nice to see big name authors in the genre including it in a way that reflects the real world, and not like it was a box ticking exercise. Seeing characters like me helped me feel like the book was set in a world that I knew and could believe in. Kriti, did you feel like Gatlon city is supposed to be a what-if future of our own cultures, or do you think it was all totally fictional?
I came into the Renegades series after reading Melissa Meyer’s Cinder which is post World War 4 and some people have some powers there. Hence, like you, this did feel like a version of our world, again bringing up questions about what caused humans to have super powers in such huge numbers? I mentioned Boyz to you, a TV series on Amazon Prime, which also has a number of people developing powers and the series does go into the rise of super humans. Gatlon city, to me, is not completely fictional, considering how much of our own world commentary we can find there.
Powers or no powers, people in powerful positions work in similar ways.
You brought up a very important point about diversity in this series. I love how nicely it is woven into the narrative. It is not in our face like often diversity seems to be. It is part of the story and everyone, no matter what they are, have an important part to play. So far all our characters have been prodigies or Renegades or Anarchists. I would love to see how a human without super powers can work with them.
As I move into Book 2, Archenemies, we have reached a point where Nova’s world has been shattered but rebuilt with hope at the same time. Though she always suspected the Renegades to be engineering powers for prodigies, the reality turns out to be worse than she expected and takes the future further from where she wants it to be. I’m excited to see what happened in Book 2. Anything you want to share about, El? Is it a similar roller coaster ride or even better? 🙂
If you like the commentary on how flawed the superheroes are, you’ll definitely enjoy the rest of this series. Again, without dipping into spoiler territory, Archenemies introduces something new and big that has a huge political and social impact on Gatlon city and the way that it’s ruled. It’s slower paced, action-wise, but the Thing I Can’t Talk About is fascinating in regard to the power dynamics of the Renegade council and the control they hold over Gatlon city and over the Anarchists. It also definitely makes you think about what it means to be a hero – but that’s something for a post-Archenemies discussion when you know more about the Renegades actions.
You talked about unanswered questions, and there’s definitely plenty of those! Some are explained in Archenemies and, I hate to say it, the rest are explained in Supernova (but the payoff is worth the wait). If you could unravel one of the mysteries Marissa Meyer has left us guessing about early, Kriti, which one would you pick? I know I was caught up in the mystery around Adrian’s mother, and that super quotable phrase ‘one cannot be brave who has no fear’ that came up super early in the book!
That has been forefront in my mind! Also, Max’s telekinesis powers were a tempting mystery as well but that got solved already. The way Renegades ends, there is one more mystery that I hope gets unraveled soon! But that would lead to spoilers…
What a fantastic book! As you read this post, I’m almost at the end of book two, Archenemies and itching to see how Supernova ends. El and I will be back with our discussion about each of these books next month. Meantime, drop by El’s blog and check out her review of Archenemies. She just posted it!
** Renegades is the first of the Renegades trilogy by Marissa Meyer, all of which are out in stores so get a copy and let me know what you think! Feel free to add to or discussion when you read it. **
Amazon Print
Amazon Kindle
Cover image: Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
It was so fun to be a part of this, can’t wait to start working on our Archenemies post!