Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Red Rising

Some clunky sentences and sentence structure at times. There are too many colours too, which I hope will be touched on in later books because if not then why are they mentioned. However, very good pacing and general stroytelling. Definitely sets the scene for the rest of the series. The ending may have been a little rushed but it still worked in the greater scheme of things. And the lack of descriptions for fictional tools. Like,,,I am none the wiser on what any of these things look like. What do they mean by razor? Also, why is it written like "gravBoots" in the book, why not capitalise the G too since the B is so important. But thats a personal annoyance more than a critique.

Red Rising was genuinely one of the best books I've read in a long time, so much so I have the rest of the series ready for when I have recovered from the emotional whiplash of this one. Dark, dystopian, excellent worldbuilding and a deep political system that I am excited to discover more of. Would highly recommend.

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greenochki's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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naechan's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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kermittothebit's review against another edition

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I'm reading others' reviews and it's as if we were reading different novels. One star.

I had the overwhelming feeling that I was reading poorly-done fanfiction, even though I wasn't focused on its similarities with Hunger Games. The writing is atrocious. The main character is one-dimensional, arrogant, contradictory, and seemingly stupid. The plot is so lacking that it felt like I was missing entire portions of writing; that I was just jumping between someone's ideas for a plot without any of the fleshing-out that makes characters interesting, does world-building, or gets you invested in any character. The most complicated character was his uncle, and even that was confusing.

The world is poorly done: With barely any world-building done, you're asked to accept that

a society that achieved widespread genetic engineering (capable of altering iris coloring and the NUMBER OF FINGERS ON HUMAN HANDS??? without any side-effects?) has not figured out how to use machinery to do tasks like mining, rather than using slavery. I only got 71 pages in, so hopefully there's some "it happened before and everyone was killed off, society restarted" explanation, but...the entire mining society is so dumb that they never explored the (apparently body-sized) ventilation system that dumps directly out into a park? Or a step back, they asked how their atmosphere inside Mars was being generated and maintained (i.e. not leaking out to the surface or being affected in any way by their expansive mining) without any visible machinery to do so? (How would they not know there were vents???) They never asked why they have televisions in the main commons but don't have any other engineering feats?

Also, and maybe this one is on me, but I just didn't love the child labor or marriage-at-puberty points. Maybe they're there to make life seem extra horrible, but it's incredibly problematic that it's mentioned (unjust in itself) but then never challenged (the main character just loves his child wife, and there's no mention of WHY it's a problem, like a lack of maturity or choice or discomfort with sex or anything). An author would be crucified if they made slavery an inherent part of their world but then NEVER mentioned anything that indicated that slavery is in any way problematic.

The main character is poorly done: (And that's on me, I think I should have judged the book by the four-square-inch gloss-covered picture of the leather-clad author doing his #Smolder on the UPPER left corner of the back cover. And if you think I'm being too harsh, I'd like to note that the words Pierce and Brown were indeed used within the first 30 pages)

He has NO REACTION to seeing the garden for the first time. He is entirely motivated for his love of his wife...who is described only as beautiful (way. too. many. times.) and rebellious...until after her death, when someone immediately shits on her for not actually being rebellious or strong ENOUGH. She's smart enough to find a vent that no one else has even thought to look for (or to explore after her entire workshop becomes aware of it???) but the world-saving is left to her (apparently also incredibly handsome, eye-roll) child husband, because he's....a Hell-diver? Is that supposed to mean Brave? Because it looked a whole lot like Stupid when he miscalculated his jump, burned his hand, and almost lost his foot out of a burning desire to buy into the social-manipulation of the productivity competition.

I have more complaints but this is starting to feel like playing with my food.

I literally had more fun and used more of my brain writing this review than reading this book. Life is too short and my shelves are too packed to try this one again.

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kazli's review against another edition

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

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

4.0

i need darrow and virginia in a way that's concerning to feminism.
people weren't lying when they said this is like game of thrones in space.

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aelytacchan's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I can't say I understand why Red Rising is a fan favorite. It wasn't bad, but its tempo is so gruelling that I almost DNFd it - saved only by the fact I already had all the audiobooks from a past sale.

I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, but I found a lot of it foul. I think that might be on purpose, but a lot of the violence seemed unnecessary and out of bounds even for the world's laws and customs.

Women were constantly used as symbols, to further plot points, or as convenient caretakers. Despite there being women peppered into the story, they were mostly inconsequential or, when they were of consequence, they just naturally decided they would rather follow Darrow.

I'll take some time to reflect on whether I want to invest more time into the following books, seeing as they're somewhat on the longer side, but as of now, I don't particularly feel like jumping into the next part of the story.

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haley49's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was very violent and graphic but so so powerful. This world explores the violence of power hierarchies. The caste system is not perfect nor is the world explored entirely but it does such a good job at what it tries to. It is a slow burn corruption arc where the mmc just barely figures out his errors but the ending still leaves room for doubt.

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