Whitley’s review of Deception (Defiance #2) by C.J. Redwine
Baalboden has been ravaged. The brutal Commander’s whereabouts are unknown. And Rachel, grief stricken over her father’s death, needs Logan more than ever. With their ragged group of survivors struggling to forge a future, it’s up to Logan to become the leader they need—with Rachel by his side. Under constant threat from rival Carrington’s army, who is after the device that controls the Cursed One, the group decides to abandon the ruins of their home and take their chances in the Wasteland.
But soon their problems intensify tenfold: someone—possibly inside their ranks—is sabotaging the survivors, picking them off one by one. The chaos and uncertainty of each day puts unbearable strain on Rachel and Logan, and it isn’t long before they feel their love splintering. Even worse, as it becomes clear that the Commander will stop at nothing to destroy them, the band of survivors begins to question whether the price of freedom may be too great—and whether, hunted by their enemies and the murderous traitor in their midst, they can make it out of the Wasteland alive.
In this daring sequel to Defiance, with the world they once loved forever destroyed, Rachel and Logan must decide between a life on the run and standing their ground to fight.
This was not a book about Rachel. Yes, I know she’s on the cover and I know the blurb goes on and on about her. But this was not Rachel’s book. This was Logan’s book. Rachel spent the majority of the book going on about being broken and basically hollowing herself of all emotions and being a shell of a character that just floated through the plot. She was utterly unremarkable. Logan, on the other hand, had all the angst and all the drama and all the action and all the backstory and all the character growth. It was his book, his story, and Rachel just tagged along and said “I am nothing” a lot.
Deception was at once better and worse than Defiance. It had a more compelling story line and better emotional issues, and things were more cohesive as a whole. Watching Logan deal with the stress of being a ‘leader’ and try to keep it together while everything is falling apart, that was just fascinating.
The storytelling part of the book was perfectly executed, excellent pacing and tension that kept me reading long after I meant to stop. The fact that we dealt with a small group of people instead of a whole nonsense culture helped, too. There was very little worldbuilding, but there didn’t need to be, because it was just 150-ish people in the woods, and that worked. The narrower focus allowed the characters to just be characters, instead of making them be cogs in a city that makes no sense.
On the other hand, this book took a serious nose-dive in the logic department. I think every page had some basic factual fail that had me rolling my eyes. Like how the book doesn’t seem to understand that all the dirt from digging a tunnel has to go somewhere, or using a battering ram against a pile of rubble. Yeah, they did that. Pretty much every time Logan opened his mouth to talk about science, I had to stop and watch reruns of Bill Nye to feel clean again.
But all that was just eye-roll-worthy, and I can deal with it. The cringe-worthy stuff came about with the introduction of the bad-guy army. They’re basically mooks that came out of nowhere to give the good guys someone to kill. They try and justify it by saying that those mooks ‘chose their leader’ and therefore…it’s okay to kill them? One feature that was harped on through both books was that Baalboden people don’t know anything about the other city states besides a few broad basics, so how do they know that every single person in that army is cool with following the bad guy? Also, one of Rachel’s running issues is that she killed someone who didn’t deserve it last book, but this book…yeah, no second thought about stabbing army guys. Nevermind the fact that the person she killed last book was also just following orders, nope, doesn’t even make her hesitate. Every single man in that other army uniformly decided to become evil, and therefore no emotional hang-ups need arise from murdering the fuck out of as many of them as possible. Just arbitrarily declare that they brought this on themselves, despite the fact that you have no way of knowing that, and then get to stabbing.
So creepy.
Grade: 3 out of 5
This book is available from Balzar + Bray. You can purchase it here or here in e-format.
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