Book Review: Red Rising
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It took a little time to get into this book at the beginning. I kept forgetting what any colors other than gold and red meant. Come to think of it, I'm still not sure about Brown, Green, and are there more besides those mentioned, Grey and Pink? The other thing that threw me off was the fact that Darrow was married to Eo. I guess I'm just not used to reading YA books about a married protagonist.
With that said, I loved the characters right away, and it certainly took me on an adventure. There were several times I was caught off guard by something and ended up on the edge of my seat while reading. The messages were clear and the story was enjoyable.
This is the first time I have really compared a story to The Hunger Games as I was reading. Much of this book, to me, came off as "What if The Hunger Games was about strengthening Capitol citizens, instead of scaring District citizens?" There are a bunch of kids in a war-like game taking place in a secure, mostly natural area. The better you are and the more you earn outside watchers' help, the more/better prizes you receive. With that said, the similarities are stop there, on the surface.
These players come from excess and comfort. They are here for glory and career. Many truly see it as a game for most of the time. The themes in this are about working together and being a leader that people trust and WANT to follow. Unlike in The Hunger Games, many of the lessons in the Institute are good lessons, just taught in an extremely gruesome way.
My one other complaint is that the ending of the game was a bit anti-climactic. We think there will be this big battle with Cassius, but he just hands over his castle. Then we think there was this big betrayal from Darrow's biggest ally and it will cause this epic fight, but Mustang comes and never betrayed him, and brings her weakened brother in tow. And it's just over. I was expecting Mustang to end up being good, but I would rather have had her pretend to work with her brother and turn against him mid-battle or something. Though motivation-wise, I guess that would have been pointless.
Anyway, I didn't mean to end on a negative because I really did enjoy this book and am very excited to pick up the second.
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I think Goodreads is good for me. It seems to keep my rants at bay. Though I think talking about just one book at a time, instead of the whole series, is really what does it.