Review Detail

Defiance by C.J. Redwine is a (I think post-apocalyptic) novel that follows Rachel Adams on her quest to find her 'declared dead' father before the Commander does. Living inside the protective walls of the city she feels confined and controlled, (basically because all the citizens are) but outside the walls lie violent wanderers and a beast straight out a legend The Cursed One (which from the various descriptions I gather is like a dragon!). To begin with I found Defiance quite hard to get into. It is a novel you have to focus all your attention on - it's not a fluffy romance like other YA novels but still has more than it's fair share of romance, betrayal and action. I quite enjoyed this as it's good to have a book that does require more than half of your attention to read it! However one of the faults of the book is that Redwine does not set the period or really the place of the book - to help understand the unique setting of the cities with the situation of the Cursed One the
book needed to go into more detail about how the cities, their commanders and the Cursed One came about.


Rachel is an interesting character - she's really headstrong and independent yet when it comes to Logan she's like putty. I enjoyed these two different sides but I did find it a little unrealistic... Logan is her father's apprentice and very technologically orientated though he can use his knives when he wants to! They both hate the Commander and refuse to believe Jared, Rachel's dad is dead. Half the book follows Logan and Rachel attempting to find a way out of the city in order to resume the search for Jared. The actual search and the showdown with the Commander is a little brief and rushed for my liking and this detracts from the book's otherwise detailed plot. There are various other characters in the book like Oliver who all contribute to the plot by reinforcing Rachel's hatred of the Commander and giving an incentive for the book to keep going - rather than Rachel and Logan just finding Jared and running instead they begin to realise that this is bigger than just them and they must do all they can to bring down the Commander.