Review: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

Title: Defy the Stars
Author: Claudia Gray
Source/Format: Borrowed from the Library; Hardcover
More Details: Young Adult; Science Fiction
Publisher/Publication Date: Little Brown Books For Young Readers; April 4, 2017
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Synopsis from Goodreads...

She’s a soldier.

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.

He’s a machine.

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 haven’t read a book by Claudia Gray in years. The last book I recall was Evernight, and I read that back before I started blogging. So I was eager to try Defy the Stars since science fiction is one of my favorite genres to read, and I’d heard a lot of good things about it. It took me a couple of days to read Defy the Stars, but I wasn’t disappointed by the story. Actually, Defy the Stars is now one of my favorite books.

You know, there are stories that deal with traveling from one place to another. Those types of stories can go either way for me. I’m specifically talking about ones that take place in space. Defy the Stars is one of the good ones. There was a lot of travel, but I kind of appreciated that because it gave the characters an adequate chance to get to know one another.

Defy the Stars was about an interstellar war with a daring plan. So there were battles, space ships, intelligent machines, and an interesting take on how technology would potentially advance in a future setting. I was expecting that. However, there were some things brought up in Defy the Stars that were almost like a mirror to current society. Especially how the stability of the environment is taken for granted. So, there was a moral conundrum going on that played into the philosophical element of the story. I wasn't expecting the philosophical aspects, but I liked how it actively challenged the characters and their way of thinking. It called their beliefs into question, and put them in situations where they had to take a second look at what they knew about the worlds they called home. It was an interesting direction to take the story, and it ultimately paid off.

I liked the main characters, Noemi and Abel. There was a clear difference between the two, and not just because of their respective allegiances. She was an ordinary person, and he was a Mech. Putting the two of them together in the same environment was entertaining, to say the least.

All that being said, the beginning was exceptionally good but my favorite part of the book didn’t happen until the later chapters. The end was phenomenal, and I’m excited to see where Gray takes the story in the sequel, Defy the Worlds.