Defy Book Review

Defy by Sara B. Larson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“True beauty is what lies inside of us, not what the world sees. A beautiful shell that houses a vile soul becomes sullied over time. But an outer shell, imperfect as it may be, that houses a beautiful, shines with that beauty, radiating it for all who have eyes to see.”

This a Dystopian novel about Alexa , a girl who had joined the military with her twin brother disguised as a boy when she was thirteen to avoid some other horrific destiny , Its been ten years since their country had started a war against some other nation and eventually magical elements would be added to the story .

I'm having such a hard time writing this review for multiple reasons, first of all is that I've read it a while ago i can't accurately remember what i felt about it , the second though is that I was a bit disappointed to begin with . i read this according to a rec video of underrated books by Naya Perkins , I love this girl , i usually trust her opinions and she really did love it , I thought I will do as much as she did , i didn't though .
when I paused Naya's video and went to read the synopsis at Goodreads , I added it to my TBR instantly , even read it only a few days after , the synopsis felt quite promising , who would fail to be reminded of Mulan ? , it was really good except for this "thrilling love triangle" bit at the top of it which made me suspicious but I kind of ignored it .
however , it was predictable . the type of dystopian you feel like you've already read before , its familiar because this is the way most dystopian books go , If you've read Throne of Glass or The Study series for example you'd know what to expect here , there wasn't much added. So it didn't stand out and most important of all , It started with a promise and ended with boredom ., though i really appreciate the end because if Alexa ended up a queen with a lame married happily ever after end the rating would have been much lower .
The world building is not that unique , The war between two nations , The evil emperor , The magic and oh yes , The jungle , there's always a jungle for some reason .
The characters and relationships did not strike me as something so well developed , The characters were interesting, but I didn't feel invested in them . Alexa for example was admirable , she disguises her self as a boy , manages to be a royal guards , its claimed that she's the best fighter or so , this Gender bending thing would have been totally interesting if she could pull it off , she was awesome until she started admiring everybody's eyes . How she got away with pretending to be a guy for years is beyond me. Although almost everyone knew she was a girl so obviously she was terrible at it .
I really did like her at the beginning but it just broke off , the character started flattening .
It seems that she doesn't do much mourning in case she has someone's eyes to admire , and I think for " The best fighter" she did much blushing and heart flattering than actually Fighting . I really think the romance took much more space than it should have had , I was totally right to get suspicious at this " thrilling love triangle " in the synopsis , i thought its a high fantasy it wont bother me much , but Oh it did . It turned out there was a whole jungle journey about choosing between brown and blue eyes . I ended up with much eye rolling than I've expected .
Then we would be "So very much shocked" to discover that she has magical powers and and she's the last hope the country has to stop the war , she is the only one who can defeat a big evil sorcerer who is apparently capable of burning an entire army of sorcerers into ashes . But not Alexa. Alexa can stop him Because …. well, because she can .

another thing that bothered me was " the breeding houses" , I read dark books , I don't feel bad because of its mere idea as long as it serves its purpose . I get what the writer wants to tell , its the fantasy that deals with misogynist societies to proves how wrong it is , but instead it felt much unnecessary , the whole thing lacks the factor of being convincing , and if you're not much convinced it hardly means anything . the whole thing was gratuitous.

Lets not harshly judge the book , I mean I've rated Throne of Glass three stars too , but I wasn't acrid on it , It has the very same quality as this book , the writing , the story , the world building and even the annoying love triangle , all the same , if you didn't mind any thing there and you loved it , you'd do love this one , too . Its just that I expected more of this book and anyway expectation Vs reality doesn't always have a pleasing outcome .




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