Defiance by C. J. Redwine

Title: Defiance (Courier’s Daughter Trilogy #1)
Author: C. J. Redwine
Genre: Dystopian, Fantasy, Young Adult
Publisher: Atom (6th September 2012)
Blurb:

RACHEL’S WORLD IS CONFINED to the protective walls around her city. Beyond them are violent wanderers, extreme terrain and a danger straight out of legend: a beast called the Cursed One that devastates everything in its path.

When Rachel’s father foes missing, she is desperate to search for him. But her attempts to flee the city bring her to the attention of its overbearing ruler. His efforts to control her make the world within the walls seem as dangerous as that outside.

Her only chance for escape is Logan. Once her father’s apprentice and now her sole protector, he feels that helping her might mean losing her completely. But if he can put his feelings aside, they might be able to save more than Rachel’s father. They might be able to break down the walls, and set their people free.

Rating: ** (2 stars)
Review:

In the autumn Defiance seemed to be the book to read on the blogsphere. I wasn’t too sure about the blurb, but I loved the cover. So, when I saw it in a local bookstore I decided to give the book a go.

For me Defiance is a book of two halves. One half I quite enjoyed reading, the other made me want to throw the book across the room and just walk away. Unfortunately, the half of the book I disliked came first. This meant it took me a while to finish it, and I did have to walk away from the book a couple of times so I could finish it, but more on that later.

The narration of Defiance is split between Rachel and Logan, which allows us a bit of insight into the characters. This was pretty useful at times, allowing the reader to know things that with a single narrator wouldn’t be possible. Rachel and Logan were quite interesting narrators, and on the whole pretty likeable though distant characters – I’m not sure Redwine allowed the reader far enough inside each characters head which leads on to what I hated about this book.

We are told that Rachel is a strong, warrioress. In my opinion Redwine does not show this aspect of Rachel’s character at all in the first half of the book – the strength seems to appear later after several trials. I also found it difficult to believe that a character who has been trained to fight from a young age, even in a world where women are supposed to be meek and mild, would not respond to being attacked except to cry.

I really wanted to like this book, and there is a LOT of potential in the second half when Rachel seems to find her backbone. However, if you like strong female leads then this is not the book for you.