Regina Shen: Defiance

In the third installment of author Lance Erlick’s Regina Shen series, which commences around two months after its predecessor Vigilance began, in the third book’s case on July 20 in the year 298 After Community Movement in the Virginia mountains, the series’ titular protagonist continues to elude Department of Antiquities agent Joanne Demarco, with the tertiary installment like its predecessors alternating between first-person sections of chapters narrated by Regina herself, and third-person excerpts focusing on Demarco’s attempts to capture Shen. The third entry confirms that “Coarse-face” is indeed Demarco’s nickname coined by Regina, alleviating some confusion this reader had with the book’s precursors.

As a reminder to those unfamiliar with the literary pantheon, climate change has melted Earth’s icecaps, flooding coastlines and turning many continents into deserts, with Regina and her family residing on the outer portion of a wall designed to hold back rising waters. As such, Regina and her clan have lived on swamplands and islands, living on things such as pre-ACM literature forbidden by the Federation and its Department of Antiquities. Regina leaps beyond the wall in search of her sister Colleen, and ultimately finds that her DNA might hold the key to stop forthcoming human extinction, with Regina visiting a doctor and one of her friends, Yvonne Cordoba, to have a procedure to confirm this.

Meanwhile, Demarco continues to deal with rivals that threaten her tenure as Chief Inspector, all who wish to control Regina, with a forthcoming referendum to determine who will become the new World Premier. Like prior books, Defiance has received comparisons to other dystopian literature such as the Hunger Games trilogy and the Maze Runner franchise, allusions that are indeed accurate, given Defiance’s bleak futuristic setting, and is consequentially highly recommended to those who enjoyed its predecessors, with helpful glossaries after the main text identifying individuals, organizations, and certain terms. As with most book series, moreover, it’s definitely recommended to start at the very beginning of the literary pantheon to get the most out of the stories.

He was raised by a roaming aerospace engineer, growing up in various parts of the United States and Europe, as well as traveling through Asia. He took to stories as his anchor, including the works of Asimov, Bradbury, and Heinlein, and has been writing since age eleven.

Growing up, he was inspired by his father’s engineering work on cutting-edge aerospace projects to look to the future.

In an ideal world, Lance would find time loops where he could step out for a week at a time to read and write. Then he would return to the moment he left, without life getting in the way. Of course, since everyone would have the same ability, he suspects life would still sneak in.

Lance is also the author of short stories and novelettes.

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