I wasn't sure what I was letting myself in for with Defiance but the mere concept behind it all certainly intrigued me enough to have me stick it on pre-order. What's more, I actually read it as soon as it was delivered, which is pretty rare for me, I have to admit. This said, it took me a fair while (a few days) to actually complete the book as my interest waxed and waned an awful lot throughout the narrative. 
 I had a number of problems with it all, including the society presented, but I guess I can grudgingly accept that people would go so far as to follow a reality dictated to them by their leader that women must be owned by a male protector and are required to be escorted everywhere by said male. Should society come to be run by such a chauvinistic pig with no respect for women, then yes, I can quite see this taking place. I'd like to think (western) society has evolved beyond this, though. My problem here was more the image painted being one I didn't like on a personal level rather than any inability to suspend my disbelief. 
 When it came to the creature that was terrorising humanity, however, I found it nigh on impossible to suspend my disbelief that far. First of all, it's described as being this huge snake-like creature that breathes fire, has an incredible sense of hearing, and has two large, milky-white eyes that are its weak spot. Wait, what? If this creature lived under the planet's crust, as is put forth, and had no use for eyes, then evolution dictates that it would not have eyes. We already know of creatures that live their whole lives in darkness in caves that have evolved to not have eyes (or should that be they devolved eyes?). This creature described in Deception sounded more like the premise for a boss in a computer game than a believable possibility of what brought our society to its knees. I was unable to accept the creature, which made accepting other parts of the narrative difficult as well. 
 As for the characters themselves, well, we have a moody redhead and a tech genius on our hands. I liked Logan (the tech genius) better than Rachel (moody redhead) but I think that's mostly down to the fact that I could connect with him better. Rachel would often make these weird decisions that didn't make sense to me and then her actions would just alienate her even further from me. At times, I could see where she was coming from, but other times she read situations completely differently to how I would have read them. This was more or less balanced with other situations where I could respect her decisions and the drive behind them. She wasn't brought up to be cowed by the Commander's laws about a woman's place in society, which would often lead to her flaunting the laws in order to get what she wanted. Logan, on the other hand, tended to be quieter and his way of contesting the Commander's rule over him didn't draw so much attention. It has to be said that Rachel's tactics put Logan in the spotlight often enough anyway. Logan's quiet revolution appealed to me more than Rachel's outright defiance. 
 Through Rachel's defiance, they eventually get split up: Rachel is sent to track down her father and whatever technology he stole from the Commander's rival, while Logan is locked behind bars. Of course, as a tech genius it's not long before he escapes and goes after her. In this part of the novel, I have to admit that I often found my interest wandering. There would be chapters at a time that focused on the internal strife and coming to understand the swirl of emotions - not my sort of thing. I don't mind, and even lap up, a bit of focus on coming to terms with one's real feelings towards another, but this book focused on it too much over too short a space to really appeal to me. 
 Apart from these passages where my interest waned and my inability to accept the bane of human existence, I enjoyed the story well enough. It's not one that will end up in my Top Reads lists, far from it in face, but I liked the world building (a very desolate landscape is brought to life) enough to be interested in revisiting it when the next book is released.