The time it was about Defy the Stars

Posted March 28, 2017 by Stacee in Blog Tours, Giveaways | 7 Comments

When I got the email for the blog tour of Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray, I couldn’t sign up fast enough.  I’ve been a fan of hers for a while now and I was excited at the idea of getting her on the blog.

Before we get to Claudia’s guest post, let’s check out the book.

Title: Defy the Stars
Author: Claudia Gray
Pub. Date: April 4, 2017
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Pages: 512
Find it: Little, Brown | Indiebound | B&N |Amazon | Goodreads

Noemi Vidal is a teen soldier from the planet Genesis, once a colony of Earth that’s now at war for its independence. The humans of Genesis have fought Earth’s robotic “mech” armies for decades with no end in sight.

After a surprise attack, Noemi finds herself stranded in space on an abandoned ship where she meets Abel, the most sophisticated mech prototype ever made. One who should be her enemy. But Abel’s programming forces him to obey Noemi as his commander, which means he has to help her save Genesis–even though her plan to win the war will kill him.

Together they embark on a daring voyage through the galaxy. Before long, Noemi begins to realize Abel may be more than a machine, and, for his part, Abel’s devotion to Noemi is no longer just a matter of programming.

Sounds good, right? And now, here’s Claudia!

IMAGES FOR DEFY THE STARS

As always, I’ve put together a Pinterest board for my new series. DEFY THE STARS is a little more challenging in this respect: While my other books were all paranormal or science fiction, the images needed to illustrate them were generally those that could be found in the real world.

With DEFY THE STARS…not so much.

While I was able to find images of some actors who at least resemble the Noemi, Abel and other characters in my mind, and of course some gorgeous images of outer space, I had to delve into concept art for games and comics, as well as some work that’s just the spectacular output of artists dreaming out futures both idyllic and dystopian. The images may not match exactly what’s in DEFY THE STARS, but I think you can get the feel of what some of these worlds look like.

Here’s the board—

https://www.pinterest.com/realclaudiagray/defy-the-stars-series-images/

Since Pinterest’s latest redesign, you can’t see captions beneath photos any longer, which makes it hard for me to highlight particular images for you. But let me go through a point out a few things:

I especially like the one with fighter ships heading toward a cream-and-orange world. Although Genesis is far greener than that, it’s easy for me to imagine Noemi in one of those fighters, preparing to defend her world.

You may notice a few pictures of underground rivers. Once you’ve read the book, you’ll know why.

Older Ralph Fiennes is the Burton Mansfield in my head. That means younger Ralph Fiennes would look a lot like the Abel in my head. To those of you who grew up thinking of Fiennes primarily as Voldemort, this may not seem very appetizing. So I threw in a few photos of the younger Ralph, so that you may behold the hotness.

As for Noemi’s casting: I don’t know any actresses of both Latina and Polynesian heritage—I’m sure they’re out there, but still unknown to me. But both Auli’i Cravalho from “Moana” and Isabella Gomez  from “One Day at a Time” have some of the feistiness I see in Noemi Vidal. At this point, though, my dream would be for this movie or TV show not to come around for a few years, which would give Dafne Keen of “Logan” time to grow up into an even bigger badass than she is already. She’d be awesome.

Speaking of Noemi—she has no snake tattoos on her back. But the image of the holstered girl with those tattoos on this board nonetheless brings her to mind for me. She even has Noemi’s chin-length black hair!

Nicholas Hoult is on this board as well, because every once in a while, Abel starts looking like the younger Hoult in my head. Also this is because there is no bad time to look at Nicholas Hoult.

The little girl with holographic grids superimposed over her face makes me think of the sorting tests for Cray, where kids are selected to be educated and pampered…and taken away from their families forever.

Plus we have more potential actors for the various roles, concept art of space stations and starships, and a few pictures that I thought just captured the spirit of DEFY THE STARS overall.

The one image I never could find? A replica of Abel and Noemi’s teardrop-shaped spaceship. Hopefully some enterprising fan artist will create that one day…

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Claudia Gray is a pseudonym. I would like to say that I chose another name so that no one would ever learn the links between my shadowy, dramatic past and the explosive secrets revealed through my characters. This would be a lie. In truth, I took a pseudonym simply because I thought it would be fun to choose my own name. (And it is.)

I write novels full-time, absolutely love it, and hope to be able to do this forever. My home is in New Orleans, is more than 100 years old, and is painted purple. In my free time I read, travel, hike, cook and listen to music. If you want to contact me, you can email me, but your best bet is probably to Tweet me. I don’t do follows on Twitter, but I follow everyone back on Tumblr, Pinterest and Goodreads.

Website | Twitter |Tumblr | Pinterest | Goodreads | Wattpad

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Huge thanks to Rockstar Book Tours for the invite and to Claudia for taking the time. Make sure you’re following Claudia at all of the links provided above.

Definitely check out the rest of the blog tour for extra goodies and keep scrolling for a giveaway!

**Good Luck!!**

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7 responses to “The time it was about Defy the Stars

  1. I am a little past 50% in reading Defy the Stars right now, and I adore it. I had gotten so used to a lot of YA SciFi being light in the science aspect that this sciencey story grabbed me quickly because I love all the tech elements and AIs are my thing. I will be heading over to her Pinterest board later today I really enjoyed this guest post. :)

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