Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Red Rising

Reread:
You can read the original review below, but now let me just say, bloodydamn I’m crying.
I freaking love this book so much!
Somehow, maybe because I knew what was coming I enjoyed it even more this time, it truly showed me the mastery of the author in all the details and foreshadowing, there’s such complexity to the characters and plot, it’s truly astounding to me.
It was an emotional rollercoaster, especially those last 50 pages. Geez, my heart was hammering in my chest for all of it.
It’s good to remind myself why this series is on my top 5!

Original review:
I wasn’t enthralled to begin with, maybe due the sci-fi world (which is not usually my thing) or the slight dragging of the introspective nature of the main character and world build, but wow did I change my mind. What a bloodydam good book!
Great characters, amazing world build, with incredible fluidity between the violence and the unbelievable action scenes with the more introspective narratives. Darrow is definitely my favourite character and I’m so thrilled to embark on this life changing journey with him.
I can’t wait to start Golden Son.

Content Warnings

sgrunwald96's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

A little basic in its hunger games YA vibes at first. Gets more interesting towards the end. Didn’t need the rape.

Content Warnings

logfan's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

danni_0412's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

shaybro1728's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

4 out of 5 stars.

I have been thinking about how I want to structure this review. I should start by saying I loved a lot of this book. I think the action scenes were dynamic. I thought the main character of Darrow was amazing. His character arc just in this first book was beautiful. But I hated the discussions of rape and the characterization of the women in this book.

In one of the first major battles of this book, our main character heard one of Titus's side characters sexually assault a woman. For me, I do not like it when authors use sexual assault as a narrative tool. Those discussions need to be done thoughtfully, carefully, and provide some direct and thoughtful justice to the character. In this first instance, I thought that the author brought up a good point. Darrow's main character asks the group what he should do and if they would care about the assault of the victim was not gold (the highest-ranking race in this world). And I think that does point to some important problems when we talk about sexual assault. We only care about it when it is against someone we deem worthy of grieving. However, there is another scene in which a sexual assault happened. The assaulter receives 20 lashes, and Darrow makes his troop give him 25 lashes saying that any wrongdoing he will share in the punishment. And the assaulted gets to be a ranking member, and the victim fades more or else into the background for me. There was no justice. Yes, the author talked about how the assault was about power. But he didn't take away power from the assaulted. Everyone moved on, and all was forgiven. This issue is still a large barrier for me in reading the next book in the series.

But second, the female characters in this book felt like props. The male characters definitely had more in-depth personalities. For example, all we know of EO is that she is pretty, she picked who she wanted to love, and she sang a death song. But we don't know anything else about her. Darrow constantly talks about how pretty Eo was. But nothing about her personality. Nothing about her character. Mustang, the new love interest, we know, is smart, pretty, and is wealthy. But she lacked any depth for me. It was just so frustrating to see Darrow have such a deeply thought-through personality and story arch, and all the women were merely props to motivate his next moves.

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