Red Rising

Dystopian novels seem to be a dime a dozen lately, some good, some horrible, so it is great to see a book set itself apart and really capture my imagination


The beginning was a little predictable, I mean to create a man with an epic quest there must be a great injustice done to him. Darrow is that boy/man, while most boys of seventeen but he has seen and been through too much to be a boy any longer. Married to his childhood sweetheart Eo at sixteen he works for his clan mining underground on Mars so the planet can be made for future generations. He works hard to provide for them but it seems that they are destined to be low forever. Eo has dreams to make their lot in life better for Darrow to stand up and rebel but he wants nothing except her.

Near as I can tell, this is Pierce Brown's first novel. Sometimes first novels are rife with issues. Pacing issues. character development problems. Not so here. I'm quite impressed. I really enjoyed this book.

This is supposed to be a book for young adults. And it is, I suppose. But don't be fooled by the genre, this book has it all~~the dystopian society, science fiction, romance, mystery and it THRILLS. 5 Rising Stars from Me

This was so promising in the first...20-30% but then it was snooze.

I liked the premise, especially the idea of society being split into colours (tag yourself, I'm a Silver) so I went into it thinking we'd learn more about that. What you actually learn is that it's kind of a retelling of The Hunger Games but a bit shit with SA thrown in for the sake of it?

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.

I'm having a hard time deciding what to say about this one. To really talk about it would require me spoiling every plot point that I loved (most of which I didn't see coming). So I won't. I'll just say that I really, really dug this book.

I don't want to just compare this to [b:The Hunger Games|2767052|The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)|Suzanne Collins|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358275334s/2767052.jpg|2792775], as much as reviews/blurbs/etc. make a guy want to. There are some surface-level similarities, yeah. And you could make the case (as I did when just starting the book) that Brown's Mars was just the place for people who thought Collins' Panem was a bit easy. In fact several parts of this feel like [b:The Hunger Games|2767052|The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)|Suzanne Collins|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358275334s/2767052.jpg|2792775] dialed up to 11. The working/living conditions for Darrow and his family are more severe, what Darrow has done to him to prepare him for what's to come makes what Cinna et al. do to Katniss look like child dress-up, Darrow plays a deadly game on a larger scale than Katniss, and so on. But Darrow's motivation is different than Katniss' – she's trying to survive, he's trying to do far more (and much of the time, survival's pretty low on his list) – the stakes he's playing for are greater, and he will go to lengths that Ms. Everdeen doesn't have to.

There are a few moments when things seem too slow, or meandering, or even redundant – but each time, I was wrong, and Brown made it all pay off. Visceral was the word that kept coming back to me as I read the book. I had almost visceral reactions to some of the horrors depicted, I could feel the grime and muck (literal and metaphorical) that Darrow crawled around in.

This shows every indication of leading to something epic in the next volume, leaving Mars behind and moving to other planets and/or the space between. As well as seeing if Darrow can retain his self and purpose – and how far will he be willing to go to carry it out.

There is a classic SF reference in Part IV that made me giggle with delight (in the middle of a pretty grim part of a fairly grim book, so I appreciated the placement). I won't spoil it, but Pierce Brown has bought a lot of loyalty from me with two simple words.

Go grab this one.

I'm a little late to the game with this series, but better late than never!

This sci-fi dystopian novel follows a society that is segregated into castes based on color; the lowest being the reds and the highest being the golds. The novel starts with Darrow, a red who is working to make Mars habitable for the human race, when his wife sacrifices herself for a cause that he hardly knew anything about. His life irrevocably changes, and we follow him as he joins with rebels and fights back against their oppressors.

The beginning of this book instantly gripped me. I loved the concept and already really like the characters. This book gives off strong “The Hunger Games” vibes, which made me excited. However, when the “test” started, which takes up the majority of the book, I lost some of my interest. The ending was predictable, so I felt that all of the time we spent in this test was boring and pointless. What kept me listening was Darrow as a character. He is an incredibly interesting narrator who I feel has a lot of potential in the future books. While I didn't love this book, I gave it a 3/5 stars because of Darrow and because I believe that this series has a lot of potential. I will be continuing the series and have high hopes.

TW: attempted rape, attempted suicide, bullying, eugenics, misogyny, murder, mutilation, rape (mentioned), sexual assault, slavery, violence

I had high hopes for this book. I have read a lot of reviews that really praised it... I must be missing something because it was just ok for me.

The issues:
1. Character developments. We really don't get to see our protagonist develop in this book. Stuff happens to him, but I wanted his character to struggle more with his choices. Some of these big defining moments were just done and then moved on. Also, we are introduced to a TON of other characters and get zero development from them.
2. Our protagonist seems to be perfect in everything he does. He is missing some character flaws for me.
3. The middle part of the book gets a little repetitive. It is a different conflict of the same flavor.

After getting past some of those issues, I must say, I enjoyed the book. I was hooked at the beginning! I just fell off the “this is incredible” bandwagon shortly there after. I also love the overall plot of the book. I just need a little more. It was good enough that I will continue on with book 2.

7.5

An interesting introduction to this franchise that promises a lot, but goes in directions that might have left me feeling slightly unsatisfied.

I was initially worried about the direction the book goes about 30% in, and was worried i was going to get a teenage fiction story, but i put my faith in the writing and wasnt left dissapointed. Though it, in moments feels quite like a teenage fiction story it consistently redeems its lows with absurdly high highs. Intense action moments and dramatic intimite character-driven moments are what the books does best. The writing in this book is genuinely fantastic, and if many other writers were given the same main plot points to play with, im sure this books could end up being another sloppy YA hunger-games type book, but this book evidently proves to us that its not that.

Our main character has quite a lot of conveniences happen to him, but it doesnt take too much from the story.

Overall the book proves itself quite well despite some worries i had when reading, and i still think about the highs of this book. An ambitious and confident, yet sometimes slipping, beginning to a saga.

It was a good enough book, but I personally need to get some space from dystopian future where children/young adults need to overthrow/reform a corrupt system. This wasn't a copy cat, at all, but it wasn't earth shattering either.

Good read, fun read ... I'd read this before Divergent, after Hunger Games, instead of Maze Runner ...

Intense, addictive, a pure thrill ride from start to finish. Not a 5 star due to fridging EO and some very minor pacing squabbles. Easy comparisons to Hunger Games can be made, but I feel this novel is closer to Ender's Game.  Brown does a great job building emotionally fraught scenes between characters and then subverting expectations. I will definitely be reading the next novel in the series. Great fun!!

At first I have to admit that I found this book quite boring. The story just seemed to be very idle and slow while the world was built. But when it took off, it REALLY took off. It was like slow... slow... BOOM. It felt like a mix of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, but set on Mars. It was really cool.

So if you want violence? This book has it. Death? Yep, right here. Friendship? That too. A brand new world? Look no further.