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Title | The Thief
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Author | Jessica Brody & Joanne Rendell
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | HarperTorch - 2002
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First Printing | William Morrow - 2001
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Title | Sky Without Stars
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Author | Jessica Brody & Joanne Rendell
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Simon Pulse - 2019
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First Printing | Simon Pulse - 2019
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Title | Between Burning Worlds
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Author | Jessica Brody & Joanne Rendell
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Cover Art | Heather Palisi
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Publisher | Simon Pulse - 2020
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First Printing | Simon Pulse - 2020
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Title | Suns Will Rise
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Author | Jessica Brody & Joanne Rendell
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Cover Art | Heather Palisi
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Publisher | Simon Pulse - 2021
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First Printing | Simon Pulse - 2021
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Category | Retelling
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Chatine, Marcellus, Alouette, Cerise, Roche, Etienne
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Main Elements | Dystopia
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Website | jessicabrody.com
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 The Thief
Growing up as the daughter of con artists, Chatine has always known a life of hardship. But once upon a time, as a young and innocent girl new to the capital city of Vallonay, Chatine dreamed of a different life. She dreamed of an escape from the rough streets of the Frets. Honest work for an honest chance. That’s all she wanted. To do her duty as a loyal member of the Third Estate and one day win the Ascension that would take her far away from her parents and their crooked lifestyle.
But when her father coerces her into taking part in his latest con, Chatine finds herself embroiled in a plot that will send her on a one-way path toward a future she never wanted and a destiny she’s been running from her entire life.
Sky Without Stars
A thief. An officer. A guardian.
Three strangers. One shared destiny . . .
When the Last Days came, the planet of Laterre promised hope. But five hundred years later, it’s now a place where an extravagant elite class reigns supreme; where the clouds hide the stars and the poor starve in the streets; where a rebel group, long thought dead, is resurfacing.
Whispers of revolution have begun—a revolution that hinges on three unlikely heroes…
Chatine is a street-savvy thief who will do anything to escape the brutal Regime, including spying on Marcellus, the grandson of the most powerful man on the planet.
Marcellus is an officer—and the son of a traitor. Groomed to command by his legendary grandfather, Marcellus begins to doubt the government he’s vowed to serve when he discovers a cryptic message that only one person, a girl named Alouette, can read.
Alouette is living in an underground refuge, where she guards and protects the last surviving library on the planet. But a shocking murder will bring Alouette to the surface for the first time in twelve years…and plunge Laterre into chaos.
All three have roles to play in a dangerous game of revolution—and together they will shape the future of a planet.
Power, romance, and destiny collide in this sweeping reimagining of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece Les Misérables.
Between Burning Worlds
A traitor. A prisoner. A fugitive.
Wanted by the Regime. Destined to save the planet.
Laterre is on the brink of war. The Third Estate are rioting against the injustices of a corrupt system. The Patriarche, reeling from the murder of his only heir, makes brutal attempts to quash the unrest, while a new militant faction launches a series of deadly attacks.
And three outlaws find themselves pulled into the fray....
Marcellus is now a traitor to his planet, willing to do anything to stop his grandfather from seizing control of Laterre, even if it means joining the Vangarde, a rebel group back from the dead.
Chatine is a prisoner on Bastille. Desperate to survive the harsh conditions of the moon, she becomes embroiled in the Vangarde’s dangerous attempt to free their infamous leader.
Alouette is a fugitive who has been lied to her entire life. Searching for the truth about her mysterious past, she soon finds herself hunted by the Regime for reasons she’s only beginning to understand.
But when Laterre is threatened by the emergence of a deadly new weapon, these three renegades must risk everything, traveling to the far reaches of the System Divine and into the white-hot center of a planet ready to ignite.
Suns will Rise
AN HEIR. A RENEGADE
A CONVICT. A CYBORG
A DÉFECTEUR
FIVE REBELS. ONE REVOLUTION.
It’s been three months since the Patriarche was beheaded, leaving behind no heir. From the outside, Laterre seems to be flourishing. General Bonnefaçon has cleaned up the streets, fed the hungry, and restored peace while the next leader is decided upon. But dangerous rifts threaten to shatter the planet from within.
The Red Scar is killing anyone with a legitimate claim to the Regime, while the Vangarde and their freed leader are preparing to overthrow it.
Then, it’s revealed that the Patriarche had a child in secret. A missing heir…
Alouette is the general’s prisoner, interrogated on the whereabouts of his renegade grandson. Marcellus is desperately searching for her, knowing she’s the key to the Vangarde’s plan, but unaware that he’s being hunted by a determined new cyborg. Meanwhile Chatine grows restless, living with a rebel group she doesn’t fit into. Until an old friend solicits her help to save his Défecteur community from a mysterious, new threat. A threat that will tie them all together.
When the general makes an explosive play for power, allegiances will shift, rebels will become leaders, barricades will rise, and the tinderbox of Laterre will finally ignite, launching a revolution five hundred years in the making.
I first read the short story for free on rivetedlit.com (it's still there) and decided that given a chance, I'd like to read more. Then a few months later I also got to read the first book on that site (it was only available for one month but could pop up again). My library had just made available the second but I'll have to wait for the third and final one to be published later this year.
First, Earth has been destroyed in some way and the human race has gone to space to colonize a solar system of twelve planets. Each country has picked a planet for themselves, some of course more desirable than others, but France ended up on Laterre (*cough* "The Earth", how creative...) a planet perpetually shrouded in clouds and rain. Over the centuries a society grew up, the rich living in a domed city under a fake sky and suns, while the rest, the workers that provide what the rich need, made do with the leftover pieces of the ship that brought them there. If that sounds a little like the setup one has in Revolutionary France you wouldn't be wrong, see this is a retelling of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.
Of course, this is the future, so we've got more advanced technology, the masses are controlled by Skins, a device implanted into their arms are birth, a kind of cell phone that's part of your body through which you get annoucements, can track your bank account and whatnot. Our "Javert" equivalent is a cyborg, droids are used to patrol the streets, and the prisoners are sent to a moon called the Bastille to mine a rare element. And if you want to go visit Germany, you need to hop on a spaceship.
The characters are the same, and yet different. Instead of the story centering on the "Valjean vs Javert" storyline, the story shifts to the other characters and the revolution itself. Now I read Les Miserables about 25 years ago so I'm not going to even try to match up plotlines and places (though clearly there are major differences with "Valjean" showing up for a dozen pages at most, "Javert" gets a bit more page-time), but the underlying core of the story is definitely there.
The one thing I couldn't quite puzzle out is why are there French words mixed in with the English text...ok I know this is France here, but then wouldn't ALL their words be in French, so tossing in random words in French wouldn't make any sense. It'd be like I'm reading an English book and havings words like "car" or "house" emphasized for no particular reason. I know it sounds cool to those who don't speak French, but it's kind of dorky to those that do. But maybe I got a hint, when they fly to another planet that is the equivalent of England, and both sides have no trouble talking to each other, that I decided that maybe there is a standard "System Divine" language used across all the planets, but each one would develop their own slang based off the original language of the settlers...I decided to go with that as an explanation.
But aside from that language quirk, I found myself really enjoying this. The worldbuilding, the characters (Marcellus is maybe a little too clueless given his upbringing but then maybe he's younger than I'm picturing him too), the tech, the slang (and I don't mean the random French words but the ones specific to this alien planet, like how the poor call the droids "bashers" because they bash around trying to catch you). Even though the books are long (over 600 pages) I didn't get bored.
November 2021
Turns out it wasn't too long a wait for the library to have the last book ready for me, in fact I wasn't ready for it and had to put it aside for a little while. It's been about 25 years since I read the original book, so I could be completely wrong, but I felt that the story started to diverge quite a bit from the original, but that's ok. In fact if the only thing that changed was the setting and the names, then there wouldn't be a point in writing the book in the first place. First of all, you'd know exactly how it ended, here you get a little suspense. Secondly, we ourselves are living in a different time and place from Victor Hugo so there are different things to say and points to make (he couldn't envision using technology to control the masses for example), though there are also many things that haven't changed at all unfortunately.
In the end, that short story teaser I started with was right, I would enjoy reading this series and I find little to complain about. I don't feel terrible that I have to give the book back to the library, which means I didn't completely adore it, but I also felt the near 700 pages I had to invest in each of the books was worth the time spent as well (I could easily read 100 pages a day). The characters grew on me, and the world spread out amongst multiple planets was an interesting one. Wonder if there were any other classic novels that were taking place in a different country during the same time period as the French Revolution, and could those tales be retold on their respective planet? I'd love to know more of the other worlds, we just barely touched on Albion (England) for example, it just opens so many possibilities.
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