Review: Defiance by: C.J. Redwine

Defiance (#1) by: C.J. Redwine (2012)

403 pages

Genre: YA/Dystopian/Fantasy?

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Source: The Library

Purchase: Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository | Amazon

Goodreads Summary: Within the walls of Baalboden, beneath the shadow of the city's brutal leader, Rachel Adams has a secret. While other girls sew dresses, host dinner parties, and obey their male Protectors, Rachel knows how to survive in the wilderness and deftly wield a sword. When her father, Jared, fails to return from a courier mission and is declared dead, the Commander assigns Rachel a new Protector, her father's apprentice, Logan--the same boy Rachel declared her love for two years ago, and the same boy who handed her heart right back to her. Left with nothing but fierce belief in her father's survival, Rachel decides to escape and find him herself. But treason against the Commander carries a heavy price, and what awaits her in the Wasteland could destroy her.

At nineteen, Logan McEntire is many things. Orphan. Outcast. Inventor. As apprentice to the city's top courier, Logan is focused on learning his trade so he can escape the tyranny of Baalboden. But his plan never included being responsible for his mentor's impulsive daughter. Logan is determined to protect her, but when his escape plan goes wrong and Rachel pays the price, he realizes he has more at stake than disappointing Jared.

As Rachel and Logan battle their way through the Wasteland, stalked by a monster that can't be killed and an army of assassins out for blood, they discover romance, heartbreak, and a truth that will incite a war decades in the making.

My Review

Defiance is… well I’m not sure. It wasn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t all that good either, at least not to me. If you noticed under my genre listing at the top I added a question mark, because frankly I have no idea what genre this book is. I didn’t get a sense of the time period, I think it takes place in the future from little things that are mentioned, but I’m not sure because there is like a dragon type creature in it and there aren't any cars or cell phones. I think it is in the future though because of a bad war or whatever, therefore they had to revert to the old ways of doing things, I believe they mentioned something about running out of natural resources, but I can’t be too sure. Obviously I don’t know and you should probably just ignore this paragraph of my review all together.

I loved that this book had dual point of views between Rachel and Logan. I'm all about getting inside both the female and male minds of a romance. I really liked Logan and how good he was at technology things. I didn’t like Rachel all that much, she rubbed me the wrong way, and was sometimes just idiotic. Oh and although this doesn’t have to do with the characters that much, I want to point out that they tree-jump, like monkeys, it is weird, and I don’t know how or why they started doing this. Okay, maybe I just need more history on this world Redwine created and I would have enjoyed the book a lot more. The Commander is the evil villain in Defiance, and although he is down right evil and creepy, he wasn’t very complex, at least not that we know of as of the first book.

There were some good action scenes, but nothing epic until the end of the novel where it was just a flurry of activity, which I did enjoy.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I like Defiance but there wasn’t anything too outstanding about it. I would have liked it better if it had some strong world building. I guess that was my main issue with the book. I notice a lot of people really like this series though, so don’t let my review stop you from reading it.