Red Rising

Executive Summary: What started out as boring and predictable suddenly became totally engrossing. If not for such a terrible start, I might have given this book 5 stars.Audiobook: The big selling point of giving this book a try was the fact that [a:Tim Gerard Reynolds 4132657 Tim Gerard Reynolds https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1370714999p2/4132657.jpg] was the narrator. I loved him with the Riyria books. In fact he spoiled me so I can't read those books and must wait for the audio versions. He does a fantastic job here as well. You get great inflections and accents adding a lot to the story. It really helped me get through the first third of this book when I was otherwise bored. Audio is the only way to go for this book/series in my opinion.Full ReviewThis book/series has been getting a ton of buzz. I really didn't care. I don't much care for YA books it seems, and the whole dystopian uprising story has been done to death. The main reason I picked it up was that it was on sale and I really like the narrator.For the first 33% or so, I felt like my original reluctance was totally justified. I was bored. It felt like paint by numbers. Nothing surprising or interesting happened. At its core there really isn't anything new here. It combines elements of several well known/successful fantasy series, but puts them in a science fiction setting.Yet despite that, once the real story got started, and all the setup was finally done, I got sucked in. I like the characters, I like the world building, and despite it's rather bleak/dystopian overtones, I found it a lot of fun somehow. It's a bit of a school trope (which I'm totally a sucker for), though it's more [b:Battle Royale 57891 Battle Royale Koushun Takami https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1331235272s/57891.jpg 2786327] than Harry Potter. I'm sure many people would say [b:The Hunger Games 2767052 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) Suzanne Collins https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1447303603s/2767052.jpg 2792775] instead, since that's the more recent/better know story. While I enjoyed that story, I just couldn't take the writing and preferred the movies to the books. The writing here could have used some more polish, especially in the first part, but I found it infinitely more readable.I might file this book under “guilty pleasure” reading, except I don't feel guilty. I like reading a book that makes me want to cheer out loud. I like having a character to root for against insurmountable odds. I love to hate when the author makes me angry or sad at a character's mistakes or misfortune. This book had all of that.It also had an original enough story that caused me to mostly forget about its slow start and sucked me in. I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. For the start of a trilogy, it does end in a decent place. There are plenty of questions left, but I feel like you could pause to read something else. Thankfully however, I don't have to and I immediately jumped into [b:Golden Son 18966819 Golden Son (Red Rising, #2) Pierce Brown https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394684475s/18966819.jpg 26984955].I'm looking forward to seeing where things go with this series, and if he can keep up the story from the latter two thirds of this book, I suspect I'll enjoy the rest of the ride, even if it ends in seemingly inevitable tragedy.