Renegades

Science fiction

First published: 2017
Print length: 556 pagesFeiwel and Friends, 2017

Description

Nova was raised by the Anarchists, enemies of the superpowered Renegades who now govern society after winning a civil war. Blaming the Renegades for failing to save her murdered parents, she enters their headquarters under a false identity and begins spying from inside. Her ability to send others to sleep with a touch is paired with her own lifelong sleeplessness. Adrian, the adopted son of two Renegade leaders, recruits Nova to his team; he can animate whatever he draws and is pursuing questions surrounding his mother’s death. As Nova and Adrian work together and gradually become close, their divided loyalties turn every mission into a test of justice, revenge, and the identities each keeps hidden.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Dialogue-driven · Direct

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Dark · Hopeful · Suspenseful · Tense

Structure

Braided · Linear

Focus

Character · Plot · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

IdentityJusticeMoralityPowerRevengeTrauma

About Marissa Meyer

Marissa Meyer writes young-adult speculative fiction that rebuilds fairy tales and other familiar popular forms around capable heroines, divided loyalties, and struggles over self-determination. Her prose is direct and conversational, with dialogue carrying much of the characterization and fast-moving plots organized through secrets, pursuits, and interlocking storylines. In Cinder, Cinderella becomes a cyborg mechanic whose personal history is bound to an epidemic and a coercive lunar court. Later Lunar Chronicles novels widen that design, bringing separate heroines and their romantic and political entanglements into a shared rebellion. Heartless takes a more tragic approach to reinvention, imagining Wonderland’s future Queen of Hearts as a gifted baker whose ambitions are narrowed by family and royal expectations. Meyer transfers the same interest in concealed identities and compromised allegiances to the superhero setting of Renegades, where an infiltrator and a young hero work together while withholding their motives from each other. Her decade writing Sailor Moon fan fiction before Cinder helps explain her ease with inherited worlds, serial plotting, and emotionally charged genre conventions.