J.A. Souders

My life is just about perfect. That's what Evie thinks, despite the memory loss she suffers, and the whispers in her mind of distant memories that she can't pull to the surface. And what's not to be perfect? She's the pampered, beautiful daughter of "Mother", the ruler of an underwater realm. Elysium was created after a war on earth left only vicious "surface dwellers" living on above and destroyed all civilized life. Or did it?

In Evie's perfect world, children are selected, based on their show more genetics, intelligence, and aptitudes, to be either breeders or enforcers. Like other breeders, now that Evie is 16, she's expected to undergo a coupling with another breeder, to ensure the purity and continuance of the people. Her mother has graciously let her select her coupling partner, but odd things keep happening to them -- if only she could remember who they were or what they'd meant to her. Should a citizen steps out of line, or when the expected surface dweller attack comes, then the enforcers step in with deadly precision. But for now, Evie is surrounded by silks, flowers, and beauty.

Until she finds Gavin, a surface dweller who stumbled into the underwater realm by accident, in her garden. Suddenly she's having a hard time suppressing all those whispered memories of the past. And let's face it. She's 16. He's handsome, dangerous, forbidden, and exciting. Hormones kick in big, too. Soon, Evie and Gavin are on the run, fighting all that she believed true, to get Gavin back to the world he knows.

This was a pretty impressive foray into the world of YA fantasy. JA Souders creates this beautiful world underwater, but then rips away the underbelly to free the beast within. There's some pretty horrific realities here, nothing like silks, flowers, and beauty, that come spilling forth. And some comes spilling out of Evie, for she has been manipulated from the get go by her "loving" mother, and it's a crapshoot at times which overlay will win out. All I can say is that when my friend Maris, at age 16, complained that her mother was a "manipulative bitch who only thought about herself", she didn't have a clue how bad it could be. Compared to Mother, Maris's mom was a piker. Elysium is a vicious place, a dark dystopia, led by one psycho woman.

I see that there are other books planned in a series. I'll be curious to see how it all evolves.

Thanks to Tor publishing for sending this book my way. show less

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Evelyn was neither strong nor weak and she had a real sense of friendship and values. At least when she remembered she had friends. Her relationships with others were also very convincing and I liked how she didn't readily accept her friend's help, even when she might have needed it. It made her a stronger more self reliant character in a way that didn't make her seem like a jerk, just misguided. I highly recommend this book to those who aren't afraid show more of a little romance and gore. show less

4.5/5 stars!

Okay, so, guys, one of my favorite TV shows of all time is Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse". It's extremely complex, and it deals with memory manipulation, as well as personality implantation. What if you could do that - do that to anyone? "Renegade" explores that in its own way in a world a little over a hundred years from now, contrasting the awful "Surface" to the underground paradise of "Elysium". Trust me, guys (and especially Whedon fans!), Souders does a fantastic job with with show more her debut, and it's something you definitely can't miss.

My life is just about perfect.

Okay, was anyone else flashing on Whedon's Dolls' refrain of, Did I just fall asleep? I know I was. And that's one of the things I really loved about this book. To the point where I was willing to forgive the semi-insta-love that happened (and believe me, for that to happen, I have to be really forgiving). The bio-ethics exploration is one of the things that seems most sturdy, important of the plot, even with the romance and action that happens. And I'm so happy that Souders made it that important. Is it okay to "condition" a three-year-old child so she can become a killing machine? Is it okay to "condition" a seventeen year-old-girl to keep her compliant to the goals you have in mind for her? Is it okay to implement eugenics to keep your own population in check, and should you find "defective" genes, is it okay to "scrub" the gene pool? Is any of that okay, period? This book explores ALL of these questions with a surprising grace, also making it very readily accessible for those that maybe aren't familiar with biopunk or bio-ethics, as well as the frankly uncomfortable (and morally disgusting) Nazi concept of eugenics. It all reads smooth as silk, and that was one of my favorite parts of this book.

Pretty much all of this book is perfect - the plot, the personal character journey arcs, the action, the set-up worldbuilding (more on that later), the sensory imagery and language, and the characters. So I won't be touching those areas, since there's nothing to really nitpick about there.

Exceptions: the set-up worldbuilding. I feel that although, for a first book in a series, it was pretty strong, I still feel it could have been improved upon. How? Maybe with more of Gavin talking about the Surface, what it's like post-war, aside from the few sentences we got when he was speaking in jail. I just feel like we got a bit cheated there as an audience, but seeing as this is indeed a first book in at least what looks to be a duology, I can forgive it, because there's at least one more book to improve on and add to that worldbuilding.

The insta-love. Okay, it didn't make me cringe, but Gavin's dire proclamations of love toward the end (and since the length of time isn't really specified of how long he's been down there, this makes it extra hard puzzle out) still made me wrinkle my nose. While I can see why Evelyn might do this (she's never seen a Surface Dweller before, so I can see her becoming attracted to him because of the sheer difference - or maybe lack of difference - between them), Gavin just made me shake my head. But because the rest of the book was so ridiculously strong, I gave in and just went with it. And it worked. I'm not going to argue with something that left me breathless and wanting more.

Final verdict? If you love dystopian, sci-fi, and/or romance genres, oh man is this the book for you. It's absolutely brutal and unforgiving and I absolutely loved it. Definitely one of the best of 2012 so far. "Renegade" is out now from TorTeen/Macmillan in North America, so be sure to check it out when you get the chance! It's definitely worth the read.

(posted to goodreads, shelfari, librarything, and birthofanewwitch.wordpress.com) show less

I suspect I know what you're thinking. You're looking at that cover and imagining that this will be yet another cheesy romance disguised as dystopia, with a world built solely to keep the hero and heroine from being able to get it on. Well, let me tell you right now, this is not the case here. The cover is beautiful and has a girl in a dress and just doesn't look like the cover for a true, creepy dystopia. You know what, though? This cover fits the book perfectly AND Renegade also happens to show more be a true dystopia, one that is freaky and creepy as all get out, and, oh my, did I love it.

You're still skeptical, right? I mean, the first sentence is "My life is just about perfect." That's a little barf-inducing. That was my thought too, so I don't begrudge you this suspicion. I worried at first because it did seem like what I expected: a selfish, naive heroine and a cheesy setup for a romance. I mentally prepared myself for the imminent headdesk that didn't come. I promise you that there's a reason that Evelyn acts the way she does in the beginning, and that reason is dark and shiver-inducing.

What's funny is that for the first couple of chapters this book is straight-up The Little Mermaid. I could think of nothing else at first, and it still makes me laugh. Evelyn likes to spend a lot of time in her garden, the privileged favorite of Mother, the leader of the people. Evelyn, though mostly a good daughter, is a little forgetful, a little disobedient. More obviously, Evelyn gets into trouble for collecting a coin from the surface, since, you know, they live in a community under the sea and aren't supposed to be interested in those on the surface. Mother's wrath reminded me heavily of Triton's when Ariel was all obsessed with the Eric statue and saved the real Eric and everything (though his anger pales in comparison to Mother's when the surface dweller Gavin appears, though that's a topic for later). Anyway, this concludes my discussion of The Little Mermaid.



Things quickly take a turn for the much less Disney, however. Enjoy the lava-shiny happy bits while they last, because it's pretty much going to be a mindfuck for the rest of the journey. As I've mentioned Mother is one scary bitch. She reminds me a bit of Eldest from Across the Universe for those of you who are familiar with that: willing to do anything to make sure her utopia remains just that. She has some serious control issues. Perhaps, though, you need a concrete example of just how horrifyingly awful and terrifying she is to believe my assessment. Well, I'll do you one better: I'll give you two examples.

1. Mother has created her idea of the perfect society in her underwater paradise. Elysium is entirely self-sufficient, can produce all of its food, technology and materials right there, with no need to go to the violent, war-torn surface. They are safe and happy. Every single person in Elysium is also blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Yeah, if taking a page out of Hitler's book doesn't have you fetching a straitjacket to stuff Mother into, then I think you probably need to go get some more education.



2. Even more horrific, since Mother could perhaps have just collected good Aryan stock to bring down with her and not created her society of people with what she believes to be perfect genetics through genocide, are the Enforcers. Every society needs police, of course, because accidents happen and people aren't perfect. Mother's Enforcers, though, are all women, taken from their parents at the age of three to be molded into the perfect killing machines.



Yeah, so this one definitely is not in the camp of fluffy books packaged as dystopias as an effort to make more money. It IS a dystopia. Hurrah! I really appreciated Souders' world building and writing, which worked really well with the story she's telling. I also thought the snippets of the society's governing tenants and documents were used to great effect at the beginning of each chapter.

The only weak point for me at all was in the characterization. Of course, this is largely intentional, I think, though I cannot explain precisely why without spoiling something I want to leave completely new to you. I think she gets the narration exactly right for what she's doing, but Evelyn is a little hard to feel with as a result. I will say thought that Evelyn will probably surprise you. She grows and changes constantly as the book progresses; like the ocean, she has hidden depths. Because we get everything through Evelyn's lens, however, the other characters do not coalesce into anything tangible.

More troubling is the instalove. Yes, I know, I hear you crying. While not ideal, I do think the instalove here is less obnoxious than most because of the circumstances they're in and because the society does not exist solely to keep them apart. The romance is there, but it's not the central struggle of the book.

Renegade is jam-packed with action and will totally mess with your head. There are a lot of dissapointing dystopias out there, as happens in any absurdly popular genre, but this one rocks and is definitely worth a read for dystopian fans. I am so excited to find out what will happen in the next book, because the story could go so many places right now and that's just fabulous! show less