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.

Whitley’s review of Defiance (Defiance #1) by CJ Redwine.

While the other girls in the walled city-state of Baalboden learn to sew and dance, Rachel Adams learns to track and hunt. While they bend like reeds to the will of their male Protectors, she uses hers for sparring practice.

When Rachel’s father fails to return from a courier mission and is declared dead, the city’s brutal Commander assigns Rachel a new Protector: her father’s apprentice, Logan—the boy she declared her love to and who turned her down two years before. Left with nothing but fierce belief in her father’s survival, Rachel decides to escape and find him herself.

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.

I can just imagine the conversation that must have taken place with this book…

“So, I’ve got this manuscript about a girl who lives in this fantasy setting–”
“Fantasies aren’t big right now. Can you make it dystopian?”
“Um, I guess we could just say that the world got destroyed and this is what’s leftover?”
“Great, let’s go with that. That fact that it makes no sense will be beside the point. Tell me about the main character.”
“Her name is Rachel, and her dad is missing so she has to go find him using the skills he taught her–“
“So she’s a Strong Female Character? Those are very big right now.”
“Well, she uses weapons, but technically–“
“Good, make sure you stress that she’s a Strong Female Character. Those are very big right now.”
“How…do I stress that?”
“Just have people talk about her strongness a lot. That’s all you really need.”
“Whatever. But Rachel, see, she has to go find her dad, and she gets this boy she has a crush on to help–“
“No, they should be in love.”
“What?”
“No one writes crushes anymore. They should be soul-shatteringly in love.”
“…”
“And there needs to be a love triangle.”
“There isn’t.”
“Can you set up for one in the next book?”
“Will you buy my book if I do?”
“Yes.”
“*sigh* Okay.”

There’s so much in this book that’s just so…weird. The setting makes no sense. Just straight-up, don’t bother trying to reason it out, it makes no sense. But it goes beyond that into…almost fetishizing misogyny. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it’s something I’ve seen more and more lately. The culture of Baalboden is extremely misogynistic, to an absolutely ridiculous degree, and it feels like the only purpose is to delight in heaping all that misogyny-flavored angst on Rachel. It’s there to show off how awesome Rachel is for bucking it, and also to present contrived hardships. But it goes beyond that. I’m making a wild speculation and I want to right now separate the book from the author because writing is a fickle beast and authors can end up saying stuff they don’t mean by accident HOWEVER: It really does feel like this book has a powerful “Big Male Protector” kink. Even though it (sorta) says that the treatment of women as property in this culture is wrong, it delights in using those same roles on Rachel and Logan and it stresses Logan’s role as being responsible for her and tasked with protecting her from the big bag world. And Logan’s actions and comments are never criticized. He’s supposed to be the good guy. The overall tone I got from the book is “people keep saying this is wrong so I guess I should too, but I kind of get off on this.”
And that made me very uncomfortable.

Rachel is also a textbook case of how not to write a Strong Female Character. At first, she was just a character, and I sort of liked her. She was brash and unruly, a bit juvenile, but that was acceptable given her age. I got the impression from her that she was very sheltered, since she was laboring under the impression that she could just shout things and get her way. Very teenager. I thought her character growth would be her developing beyond this tantrum-throwing, but nope, apparently we’re supposed to admire her “spirit.”

Though I didn’t mind Rachel in principle, the more people went on about how strong and awesome she was, the more I hated it. She’s not strong. The fact that she can use weapons is not strong. She was thoughtless and prone to throwing fits, she was always either running off to do things without thinking or trailing behind her menfolk, she didn’t make any serious plots or plans or contribute to anyone else doing the same, and every now and then she’d just sort of fall over and cry for a while. Any time she did do anything on her own, it was always a disaster that got her scolded afterwards. There’s a level at which I don’t mind this, but that level is “potential to grow up and be strong,” not “hey, she can stab stuff, let’s talk for six pages about how strong and awesome she is.”

The bad guy was also a big gripe for me. He was too over-the-top and quite stupid, especially given the set up. Supposedly, he’s allowed to repress women right into non-person-hood and murder and torment people at the drop of a hat and do all these horrible things because he has the power to keep the Cursed One out of their city. Erm, no. All this supposedly takes places 50 years after modern day, and there’s no way our current culture would put up with this. We would find out how the Commander does his ‘keep away’ trick and then either force him to do it or copy it. In fact, it turns out his trick is just a necklace that repels the monster. Why not just take that from him and then stab the guy in the face?

Also, all this takes place after modern day, but supposedly no one could defeat the Cursed One because its scales are “impervious to arrows and swords.” Um…hello atom bomb? They even manage to injure the thing with some mild explosives in this book, but no one thought “hey, let’s nuke the fuck out of that monster”?

Like I said, this is a fantasy setting that clearly got shoehorned in to dystopia just for the sake of calling it dystopia.

It’s a shame, because the core plot of this book wasn’t bad. It was quite engaging, actually. The book had the potential to be amazing, but it got held up with poor characters and creepy kink and abysmal logic gaps. And the attempts at science downright hurt me. If only they’d been kept as straight-up magic; this book is begging to be a fantasy.

Grade: 2 out of 5

This book is available from Balzer + Bray. You can purchase it here or here in e-format.