*I received this book from the publisher in exchange for and honest review.*
Title: Defy the Stars
Author: Claudia Gray
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 9780316394031
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Noemi Vidal is seventeen years old and sworn to protect her planet, Genesis. She’s willing to risk anything—including her own life. To their enemies on Earth, she’s a rebel.
Abandoned in space for years, utterly alone, Abel has advanced programming that’s begun to evolve. He wants only to protect his creator, and to be free. To the people of Genesis, he’s an abomination. Noemi and Abel are enemies in an interstellar war, forced by chance to work together as they embark on a daring journey through the stars. Their efforts would end the fighting for good, but they’re not without sacrifice. The stakes are even higher than either of them first realized, and the more time they spend together, the more they’re forced to question everything they’d been taught was true.
I am a huge fan of Gray’s previous series, so I was thrilled to hear about her brand new series, starting with Defy the Stars. This is a coming-of-age story of changing the world, or in this case, the universe. Noemi Vidal’s purpose in life is to protect her planet, Genesis, from the attacks of their enemy, Earth. During a mission, she goes to help a dying friend and encounters Abel, a mech who is superior to all others. He seems so human, it’s hard to forget that he is AI. Their chance encounter leads to a galaxy wide adventure to put a stop to the interplanetary war that neither of them chose to be apart of. Both characters end up on a track that the could have never even dreamed of as they risk everything to save all of humanity.
I love a good accessible sci-fi and this book landed squarely in that genre. I love the tech, the AI, the intergalactic travel, and so much more. As a whole, this book is about the advancement of technology and what it’s done to the human race. Yes, there is that hint of romance, but it doesn’t detract from the story, and in many ways–both in this fictional world and our own reality–the romance raises ethical issues that I suspect will be a focal point in later books in the series. I am excited to see how this romance plays out in further books. I don’t want to spoil too much here, but I think this book will raise a lot of questions and discussions for readers surrounding artificial intelligence and how it can infringe upon and call into question our own humanness.
This book was very complex despite it’s fast pace and introduces many topics such as technological advancement, romance, friendship, loss, grief, respect for the dead, rebellion, war, political extremism, and so on. Claudia Gray is a masterful world builder, as we saw in her previous series, and she constructs and incredibly vast reality in this new book. She does so amid action packed fighting sequences and exploration of new worlds. I hope, dear readers, that you’ll find this book as interesting as I did. If nothing else, it is a fast-paced and thrilling story of an adventure to new and unknown territories in search of a way to save humankind, and that’s enough to draw me in! 🙂
Worn Pages and Ink 