In starting to write this review, I just had one of those weird moments where I couldn’t remember the protagonist’s name. I guess that says a lot about my feelings for Defy the Stars. It was just fine, but it wasn’t spectacular. It was forgettable. I think that the book makes a lot of promises it doesn’t keep within its world-building. There are very few things that annoy me more than a totally awesome world, and a plot that ignores all that and goes for the budding relationship. Give me contemporaries for love stories – I don’t want them breaking in and disrupting my sci-fi action scenes. They can be there, but they shouldn’t be intrusive.
Noemi and Abel are both pretty forgettable characters on their own. Noemi is your typical hard-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside sci-fi heroine, and Abel is your standard AI-who-discovers-he-has-feelings. Nothing about either of these characters makes them overly interesting or special. If you like the characters tropes here, fabulous! But don’t expect any exciting breakthroughs.
The worldbuilding though? Cool. I love the built in aspects of terraforming. The different colonies reminded me a little bit of the factions in Divergent – you can only be on Stronghold if you are, in some way, strong as an example. I wanted to learn more about the universe and Earth’s conquests, but all these things were a backdrop for the relationship. Even the growth of AI and Noemi’s wanting to stop the war felt like excuses to go planet hopping and fall a little more in love at each incident. If you love yourself a YA sci-fi romance, you’ll probably like it. The sci-fi aspects are wicked cool, but they take a back seat.
Worth mentioning – there’s a lot of conversation about religion here. This is personally something that makes me a bit uncomfortable. I find religion in general fascinating; Noemi is Catholic and the conversation was just preachy enough to remind me of my childhood. Noemi talks about faith and prayer quite a bit, blames God for never answering her prayers and struggles with her own waning Catholic belief. There’s not a lot of conversation about religion in YA (it’s one of the things I applauded about Heretics Anonymous) so I think it’s good it was included, even if it wasn’t to my taste. I think that there were times it felt like less of Noemi’s struggle, and more a bit… preachy. But again, I know I’m projecting a bit. Still, I hadn’t seen the mention of religion in other reviews, and as faith is the fundamental cornerstone of Genesis and a constant conversation between Noemi and Abel, it seems really important to talk about it.
Listen, Defy the Stars gets fabulous reviews on Goodreads, maintaining an over four-star average two years post-publication. If you think this is a book you may enjoy and you’ve been waffling about adding it to your TBR, just do it. It’s a great mix of new elements and tired tropes, but I can see people absolutely falling in love with this one. I’m just not one of those people. It was, as I said in the second paragraph, and overall forgettable book for me. I didn’t hate it, I don’t regret reading it, but I found it unexciting.
For those of you audiobook listeners out there – the reader for Abel is very robotic. It’s pretty clear that this is a dramatic choice, but hours in a quirky C3P0-esque monotone were… trying.
Do you enjoy YA sci-fi?
Have you read any other human/AI love stories?
Would you volunteer for a suicide mission if you thought it would postpone a war?
I almost took this out of the library today, as I’ve heard really good things about it! I’m sorry you didn’t love it.
I want to read this, but I’m cautious about books that have religion in. I’m a Christian, and I’ve read books that have handled it insensitively…so I’ll have to think about that!
I don’t think the religion in here is disrespectful, if that helps? Noemi is a character struggling with her faith, so there’s that aspect, but I don’t find her blasphemous. I don’t *think* you’ll find it offensive. 😊 If you’re interested, give it a try!
It’s a shame this one wasn’t as memorable as you were hoping. The premise sounds really good, but I don’t like romance to take over in sci-fi novels either and any ‘preachiness’ would also put me off. If I do get around to reading it, I will avoid the audiobook I think.
I would definitely recommend visiting this one in hard copy. But yeah, the romance taking over was a bit of a downer for me. Take out that aspect, and this really was a cool sci-fi idea.