This is officially my second Marissa Meyer book review (my first is linked here if you want to read it) and I think it's safe to say that, at this point, I am an official fan of Marissa Meyer's work. So, without any delay here's my review on her Renegades trilogy.
How can we expect people to change if we don't give them the chance to?
Renegades
This series starts in Renegades and follows the two characters of Nova and Adrian. Nova is the daughter of the world's most terrifying supervillain. Adrian is the son of the world's most powerful (and ruling) superheroes (or super-dads to be more specific).
The Renegades are an organisation of heroes who are working to fix society and retain peace and order after anarchy destroyed the world. They're the symbols of everything heroic - peace, hope, and safety. Adrian is trying to make a name for himself as a Renegade and to make his dads proud. Nova, on the other hand, hates the Renegades and she's trying to take them down from the inside. She believes in the villain's ideology (the Anarchists) and she's working in secret to take control away from the Renegades.
In the sequel, Archenemies, Nova (who is undercover) and Adrian are members of the Renegades. They're busy doing your regular superhero stuff like saving the world. But, Nova has her own plans to take down the Renegades and bit by bit she's working towards her goal. But it's getting harder for her to keep her head straight; she's starting to fall for Adrian and keeping her identity a secret is getting tricky as well. The Renegades, on the other hand, have a weapon to take down the Anarchists and that weapon can take away their superpowers. While some think the weapon is justified others have their worries, and the moral dilemmas only grow from there.
The final novel in this trilogy is Supernova. Here, the Renegades' worst enemy has returned with Nova's help and chaos is wreaking havoc around the city. With Nova's true identity exposed, she's torn between helping the Anarchists, whom she thought she supported and helping the Renegades, who, while flawed, are still fighting for the good of humanity. Her relationship with Adrian fractures and Adrian is torn between being the man he wants to be and the person and the person he really is. In an explosive final battle between the Anarchists and the Renegades and between Nova and Adrian, who will win?
The characters are amazing! We get dual perspectives of Nova and Adrian so we get the villain's and hero's perspectives and this is so brilliantly written. I think the intrigue with this series is how perfectly Marissa Meyer writes these two opposing perspectives along with their opposing ideologies and beliefs. Because, of course, Nova and Adrian are fighting for different sides but they still manage to fall in love with each other. At some points, you really start to think that maybe the Anarchists are right and the Renegades are wrong and vice versa. These characters are complex in their beliefs and their beliefs are too. It's great to read about these complexities and it kept me hooked throughout the whole series.
The plot is even more amazing! As I said, this is a superhero vs supervillain story. We get your classic good fighting against evil but we also get insight into the complexities of what the Renegades and Anarchists believe in. Regardless of which side you're on, I think the plot perfectly handled how complicated these types of situations are; for example, the Renegade's weapon to take powers away from people seems like a good idea when they use it on the Anarchists, but what are the limits to this? Who gets to decide who should lose their powers? What's stopping the Renegades from just using it on everyone? There's also the example of what the Anarchists want: anarchy, total freedom to use their powers whenever and wherever they want. While it sounds like a good idea, who establishes law and order? What happens when someone uses their power to harm others? I think Meyer did an absolutely brilliant job in highlighting that this story isn't plain and simple, there is so much more depth to the issues the novels look at.
Overall, this is a brilliantly written superhero vs supervillain novel with high-stakes, world-ending schemes and superpowers and a super-romance. There are secret identities, battles between justice and vengeance as well as opposing ideologies which was intriguing to read about. It's entertaining and it's just like your favourite comic book movie mushed into a trilogy of books. It's a great series and I highly recommend it.
As usual, thank you so much for reading and I hope you all have a lovely day.
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