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inkandplasma 's review for:
Archenemies
by Marissa Meyer
Full review: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/02/25/archenemies-by-marissa-meyer-review-renegades-2/
I have to admit that Archenemies was a weaker series entry than Renegades or Supernova. Writing this after finishing the series, it's hard to separate out the events of Archenemies from the later book. I ended up making a list of things I remembered post-Renegades and splitting them until I remembered where Archenemies ended. I'd say that's because I marathon-read these books, but I had a week's break between the two and I really do think that Archenemies suffered a bit with middle-book filler. Note that I still gave it 5 stars, though, because it really, really, picks up in the second half.
I think the reason I prefer Renegades is that it was very action-driven. I usually care more about characters than plot, but Archenemies went a little bit too far the other way. After Renegades left us on the cliff-hanger that Ace had been alive the whole time, it's basically not discussed for ages. The other plot threads left at the end of Renegades, like Adrian's mother's murder, were left alone too and it just felt a little bit strange after how exciting the end of book one was. The first two thirds of Archenemies were slower, and while I enjoyed the character moments I think they could have been more concise. It was so good to see Adrian and Nova's relationship develop, and to see brotherly moments between Adrian and Max, but I wanted a little more punchy action or superhero drama - even a patrol sub-plot would have helped. It meant that Archenemies was slow through the middle, drawn out in character development that wasn't moving the plot along, before it picked up hard in the last third of the book. It just would have been nice to have the character development and the plot move along together.
The ending though, holy wow. There was so much left up in the air at the end of Archenemies. I only had to wait a week for my copy of Supernova to show up so that I could read on, but I feel for anyone who had to wait a full year to read the resolution to this series. It felt like everything had gone wrong that could possibly go wrong at the end of this book, and like Supernova had to start explosively. There is a lot to be resolved in Supernova, a lot and things are bound to be intense. Nova has definitely thrown caution to the wind, and I was nearly feral with excitement by the time I hit the last page.
The only other thing I can say without flooding the review with spoilers is that the Renegades? They need to chill, holy fuck. One of the major aspects of Archenemies was 'Agent N', which I won't discuss in much detail because this is a spoiler-free review. Agent N made me repeatedly say 'what the FUCK' out loud. Just a quick little side-slide into crimes against humanity, prisoner experimentation and punishment without trial in my superheroes? Y'all are being villainous as hell, Renegades, pack it in if you want to be the 'good guys'.
I have to admit that Archenemies was a weaker series entry than Renegades or Supernova. Writing this after finishing the series, it's hard to separate out the events of Archenemies from the later book. I ended up making a list of things I remembered post-Renegades and splitting them until I remembered where Archenemies ended. I'd say that's because I marathon-read these books, but I had a week's break between the two and I really do think that Archenemies suffered a bit with middle-book filler. Note that I still gave it 5 stars, though, because it really, really, picks up in the second half.
I think the reason I prefer Renegades is that it was very action-driven. I usually care more about characters than plot, but Archenemies went a little bit too far the other way. After Renegades left us on the cliff-hanger that Ace had been alive the whole time, it's basically not discussed for ages. The other plot threads left at the end of Renegades, like Adrian's mother's murder, were left alone too and it just felt a little bit strange after how exciting the end of book one was. The first two thirds of Archenemies were slower, and while I enjoyed the character moments I think they could have been more concise. It was so good to see Adrian and Nova's relationship develop, and to see brotherly moments between Adrian and Max, but I wanted a little more punchy action or superhero drama - even a patrol sub-plot would have helped. It meant that Archenemies was slow through the middle, drawn out in character development that wasn't moving the plot along, before it picked up hard in the last third of the book. It just would have been nice to have the character development and the plot move along together.
The ending though, holy wow. There was so much left up in the air at the end of Archenemies. I only had to wait a week for my copy of Supernova to show up so that I could read on, but I feel for anyone who had to wait a full year to read the resolution to this series. It felt like everything had gone wrong that could possibly go wrong at the end of this book, and like Supernova had to start explosively. There is a lot to be resolved in Supernova, a lot and things are bound to be intense. Nova has definitely thrown caution to the wind, and I was nearly feral with excitement by the time I hit the last page.
The only other thing I can say without flooding the review with spoilers is that the Renegades? They need to chill, holy fuck. One of the major aspects of Archenemies was 'Agent N', which I won't discuss in much detail because this is a spoiler-free review. Agent N made me repeatedly say 'what the FUCK' out loud. Just a quick little side-slide into crimes against humanity, prisoner experimentation and punishment without trial in my superheroes? Y'all are being villainous as hell, Renegades, pack it in if you want to be the 'good guys'.