Books: Incarceron and Red Rising
Incarceron Catherine Fisher
YA science fiction/fantasy. Incarceron is an entire world that is a prison, and is a grim and hopeless place of gang warfare, metal forests and creatures that are part organic and part metal. Inside Incarceron, amnesiac Finn is tormented by visions of Outside, visions that feel like memories. But how can they be memories, when nobody can ever enter or leave? Outside is far from perfect, either. Time has been abolished, and everyone is compelled to live in a outward pastiche of the 17th century, albeit one maintained by advanced technology. Claudia, daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, is shortly to marry the unpleasant heir to the throne, who became heir following the death of his half-brother three years ago. (Shall I mention here that Finn has a mysterious crown tattoo on his wrist?) Then Finn and Claudia each come into possession of a crystal key, each one somehow linked to the other…
I got a bit bored with this, I have to admit. It had some lovely turns of phrase, and the world-building was interesting, but the characters never came alive for me. I ended up just not really caring, and skimmed quickly to the end - only to find that it's not a standalone at all, but has a sequel. We've got it in the library. I won't bother reading it.
Red Rising, Golden Son and Morning Star by Pierce Brown
I started this trilogy last year, but got side-tracked early in book two and my reading petered out. I thought I'd give it a second chance now that the series is complete, so I reread what I'd read before - even after just a year, I'd almost completely forgotten it - and then read on. Given the awful cliffhanger at the end of book two, I'm rather glad I stopped where I did last year.
Darrow is a Red, the lowest of all the social classes in a highly segregated society, and lives in a colony below the surface of Mars mining the raw materials needed for terraforming. They are bold pioneers, they are told, helping to prepare Mars for future colonisation, and their labour and obedience is a heroic sacrifice for the sake of the rest of humanity, suffering on an overcrowded, ruined Earth. Darrow is a Helldiver, a job calling for exceptional reflexes, audacity and mental dexerity. After his wife is hanged for a minor act of defiance, Darrow, too, is hanged for burying her body. But he doesn't die. A resistence group snatches his body from the gallows, and they reveal to him that Mars - and the whole solar system - has actually been fully colonised for generations, with the higher Colours (i.e. classes) living in luxury in shining cities. They want him to infiltrate the Golds, the ruling class, and work his way up through the ranks until he is in a position to bring the whole system down from inside and build a better world.
This is a trilogy dominated by war. Much of the first book concerns a brutal war game involving teenage Golds striving to be initiated into the super-elite. After that, I'd expected a slow rising through the ranks, but everything quickly kicks off into all-out space war. There are twists and turns, shifting fortunes, victories and betrayals. There are some villains, but for the most part, this is not a series of simple good and evil. Many Golds, who have become virtually superhuman due to generations of genetic modification, consider the lives of lower colours to be utterly without value, but some of them are still honorable people who believe wholeheartedly that their way is the only protection against misery and chaos, and nobly sacrifice themselves to that cause.
I found it all rather compelling. Yes, it's told in first person present tense, which I don't normally like at all, but I soon stopped noticing. Many of the secondary characters never really came to life for me, which is a shame. I'm not sure I always enjoyed it. It's a story of a grim war in a grim world, and it often seems as if there can be no good ending. Everyone suffers greatly - there is torture, though mostly off camera - and a lot of characters die. People have to make terrible choices and dreadful sacrifices in the hope that it is serving a noble goal. But I found it hard to put it down… although there were times when I almost dreaded picking it up again, since I knew that bad things lay ahead.
For me, the true test of how much I like a book is whether I return to it for a reread some years down the road. Will I reread this series? Only time can tell. It's grim - though less so than some - and there's precious little humour in it, although a prevailing theme is the enduring nature of friendship and hope even in the worst of times. I don't think I love it, but I found it compelling and thought provoking, and am glad that I returned to it after my abortive first reading.