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habitualbookoffender's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
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
4.75
The first quarter (ish) of the book is kind of slow, BUT it’s a lot of world building and pertinent information. But there’s a significant turning point in the book and from there, it’s full speed ahead. This book is SO unbelievably good. It draws you in so well, the characters are so well formed, etc.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery, Grief, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Rape and Racism
rumpixel's review
adventurous
dark
hopeful
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? Yes
4.5
The beginning of this book relies a little too heavily on some tired tropes. The second Eo was introduced, I knew home girl was going to be used as the crutch for Darrow's 'call to adventure'. It doesn't wholly detract from the impact and shape Darrow's grief and rage take, but she does become the manic pixie dream girl whose only story purpose was to love Darrow and thrust upon him a moral quest he otherwise had no interest in.
Once you get past that, the book becomes far more interesting. Nothing truly came out of nowhere in terms of plot twists, it's more like multiple plot points sit on a steady simmer on the backburner and you keep a wary eye on — which overall makes it a satisfying read. The world building was integrated throughout, I never felt bogged down with details. The game is brutal and fascinating. The relationships are what makes this book strong against my criticisms.
At the core of it, Darrow is a bit overpowered but he's also our conduit to engage with the wide cast of characters. All of them shine in their own way, even the deplorable ones. Sevro quickly became my favourite, the real MVP, and if he were the main character I think that would have diminished just how great he is to experience through Darrow's perspective. Darrow also fails enough times, either through his own hubris or miscalculated trust, that it offsets any feeling that he is invincible — in my opinion.
All in all, I'm definitely going to continue the series. I'm a sucker for a Greek/Roman God class system, and in the current age of late stage capitalism I'm particularly hungry to eat the rich >:3
Once you get past that, the book becomes far more interesting. Nothing truly came out of nowhere in terms of plot twists, it's more like multiple plot points sit on a steady simmer on the backburner and you keep a wary eye on — which overall makes it a satisfying read. The world building was integrated throughout, I never felt bogged down with details. The game is brutal and fascinating. The relationships are what makes this book strong against my criticisms.
At the core of it, Darrow is a bit overpowered but he's also our conduit to engage with the wide cast of characters. All of them shine in their own way, even the deplorable ones. Sevro quickly became my favourite, the real MVP, and if he were the main character I think that would have diminished just how great he is to experience through Darrow's perspective. Darrow also fails enough times, either through his own hubris or miscalculated trust, that it offsets any feeling that he is invincible — in my opinion.
All in all, I'm definitely going to continue the series. I'm a sucker for a Greek/Roman God class system, and in the current age of late stage capitalism I'm particularly hungry to eat the rich >:3
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery, Torture, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Murder, Death, Violence, and War
Moderate: Sexual assault, Rape, and Racism
bookfulthoughts's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Magnetic and captivating ✨
“I am the spark that will set the worlds afire. I am the hammer that cracks the chains.”
I really liked this one! The story was extremely well written and interesting. The world building was excellent and extremely detailed. I was able to visualize exactly what was happening and what everyone looked like! I like that the plot was never lost in the storytelling and this book sets up for the rest of the books in the series perfectly. I do believe that I can see this book becoming a classic in the near future. I loved the concept of the color classism and how that was presented. In my opinion, that was a unique aspect of the story. I also loved that Darrow wasn’t perfect! I he has many flaws but that’s what makes this book good. It gives his character room to grow and develop in complexity.
My reasoning for not giving it 5 stars. Personally, in certain parts of the book it was very reminiscent of the Hunger Games. Having inspiration is fine and I have no problem with that. I’m not sure if it's just me but some scenes felt too familiar. Another thing I took points off for was the fact that I felt like I should have been more emotionally attached to certain characters but I didn’t feel much when things happened. I felt like it was a little cold at times with other characters. Besides these issues, I really liked this book and I do plan on reading the rest of the series in the near future.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, War, Violence, Toxic friendship, Torture, Sexual assault, Murder, Kidnapping, Gun violence, Forced institutionalization, Classism, Animal cruelty, Blood, Death, Stalking, Slavery, Sexual harassment, Racism, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Grief, Hate crime, Genocide, Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Confinement, and Animal death
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cursing, Death of parent, Cannibalism, Racial slurs, Sexism, and Self harm
pearceman's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Epic revenge story set up some big plot with a fun “Hunger Games”- style survival of the fittest leader in a dystopian society
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Racial slurs, and Racism
Moderate: Classism, Stalking, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, Violence, Death, and Torture
Minor: Sexism and Animal death
lillelow's review against another edition
DNF 40%.
The book begins the worst possible way with drunk father figures and community leaders laughing about raping the protagonist’s wife - and no one raises an eyebrow. Misogyny, machoism, masochism, prostitution as a means of female survival and male pleasure, a world in which all women are beautiful, marry when they’re 14 and work with silk while all the manly men work in the mines… This is a sci-fi novel, a world of make believe. You can write about ANYTHING. Create ANY future. Yet this is what we get. I’m SO F* TIRED of reading about this bullshit.
I wanted to put the book down then and there, but decided to give it a go because of all the good reviews.
I shouldn’t have bothered. It doesn’t get better.
The premiss is interesting, but the execution and the character portrayal is horrible.
I didn’t like the protagonist at all. Clever, brave, strong, humble, hardworking, loving… All the right things! At least, that’s what I’m told. Honestly, all I see is a self absorbed insular teenager with no weakness who excels at everything he does for no reason other than he’s the chosen one. He doesn’t have to be likeable, but believable is quite important, and this book does none of it.
The supposedly romantic interactions between the protagonist and his wife are probably supposed to be charming and sweet but only feel stiff, cliche and childish and evoke no emotions at all. But hey, at least she is incredibly beautiful and we’re told everyone loves her… I guess that was enough for the author.
I didn’t like any of the other characters either. Even the ones who are described in good light are horrible, not to mention the way they express themselves. I’m not prude. Explicit language and swearing is fine. But most of the writing, dialogue, slurs and expletives in this book are just disturbing and annoying. You cannot make me believe people talk like this for real. Is it supposed to be cool?? I couldn’t stand it, I hated almost everyone and the flat writing did nothing to help.
At 40% through, I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t care about the story or the characters and was mostly annoyed at it all. Ender’s Game’s the perfect chosen one meets the segregation and killing of The Hunger Games or Gladiator (only it’s terrible) in a violent color-coded elite school on Mars with some sprinkles… no, make that a heavy rain…. of machoism and sexism.
No thank you.
★★-
The book begins the worst possible way with drunk father figures and community leaders laughing about raping the protagonist’s wife - and no one raises an eyebrow. Misogyny, machoism, masochism, prostitution as a means of female survival and male pleasure, a world in which all women are beautiful, marry when they’re 14 and work with silk while all the manly men work in the mines… This is a sci-fi novel, a world of make believe. You can write about ANYTHING. Create ANY future. Yet this is what we get. I’m SO F* TIRED of reading about this bullshit.
I wanted to put the book down then and there, but decided to give it a go because of all the good reviews.
I shouldn’t have bothered. It doesn’t get better.
The premiss is interesting, but the execution and the character portrayal is horrible.
I didn’t like the protagonist at all. Clever, brave, strong, humble, hardworking, loving… All the right things! At least, that’s what I’m told. Honestly, all I see is a self absorbed insular teenager with no weakness who excels at everything he does for no reason other than he’s the chosen one. He doesn’t have to be likeable, but believable is quite important, and this book does none of it.
The supposedly romantic interactions between the protagonist and his wife are probably supposed to be charming and sweet but only feel stiff, cliche and childish and evoke no emotions at all. But hey, at least she is incredibly beautiful and we’re told everyone loves her… I guess that was enough for the author.
I didn’t like any of the other characters either. Even the ones who are described in good light are horrible, not to mention the way they express themselves. I’m not prude. Explicit language and swearing is fine. But most of the writing, dialogue, slurs and expletives in this book are just disturbing and annoying. You cannot make me believe people talk like this for real. Is it supposed to be cool?? I couldn’t stand it, I hated almost everyone and the flat writing did nothing to help.
At 40% through, I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t care about the story or the characters and was mostly annoyed at it all. Ender’s Game’s the perfect chosen one meets the segregation and killing of The Hunger Games or Gladiator (only it’s terrible) in a violent color-coded elite school on Mars with some sprinkles… no, make that a heavy rain…. of machoism and sexism.
No thank you.
★★-
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Classism, Self harm, Domestic abuse, Bullying, Mental illness, Emotional abuse, Confinement, Misogyny, Body shaming, Alcohol, War, Trafficking, Slavery, Racism, Panic attacks/disorders, Gaslighting, Adult/minor relationship, Hate crime, Death of parent, Sexism, Colonisation, Alcoholism, Addiction, Blood, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Medical trauma, Sexual harassment, Kidnapping, Cursing, Racial slurs, Body horror, Drug use, Suicide attempt, Rape, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual assault, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual violence, Excrement, Gore, Death, and Eating disorder
mnkeemagick's review
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
**LONG AND SPOILERS AHEAD**
Having finally read this book after it's long stint on my TBR, I must say that I'm disappointed. It seems to me that this is a book that neatly falls into the hype over substance category.
This is the story of a "lower Red", the lowest members of a color based caste system, as he realizes his life of mining under the surface of Mars to aid in terraforming efforts is a lie. He is awakened to this lie and enters the fold of a group of revolutionaries that wish to place him high in society that they might overthrow their oppressive color caste system.
To start, our protagonist Darrow is definitely a Mary Sue esque character, exceeding all expectation in strategy, intelligence, and physical prowess despite being a 16 year old whose whole life has been relegated to mining, drinking, and fighting. It's expressly mentioned that he's different from other Reds and lower colors, that he is a new step in evolution that is naturally above the others. Even after his transformation into a Gold where he is enhanced so that he can begin working his way through the upper reaches of society, he is described often as more than the standard for their perfectly crafted selves.
More dexterous in a new body he has to learn to function in, stronger despite size, smart enough that he is one of the highest scorers of the entry exam, to the point he must be interrogated to determine if and how he cheated, and immediately having a mind for logic puzzles and politics. All against people who were bred, raised, and literally modified as he was for their entire lives to do these things. He even prevails over those who have already passed the testing and are considered the highest of the high.
Yet at the same time, he's naive or easily fooled as the plot needs. In the last hundred or so pages he's caught in a trap alone 3 separate times using the same trick.
Then there's his motivation, given to him expressly and with no subtlety by his wife in the early stages of the book, cemented by her martyrdom. She is literally written as an exposition tool to open his eyes and die, then be pined after as needed. Much the same is true of his few interactions with lower colors after he leaves the mines. Symbols of virtue or strife, but certainly not people.
The world building is haphazard and doesn't make much sense. It's loosely tied to Greco-Roman mythos, mostly in name and style more than substance or message. There are little details surrounding the story happening on Mars that irk me, namely the constant thinking about how they are in "low gravity" or specifying that it's 0.376 Earth gravity even though he has spent his entire life on Mars and only learns the difference when training his new body under higher gravity to strengthen it. Names and references aren't consistent, with images given from Egypt, the Bible, and The Reaper. It's frustrating that there's so many little details constantly being shoved at you to remember it's on Mars, only to have slips, inconsistencies, and missed opportunities like the artificial fortress that watches over the game is referred to as Olympus when it could have been set in a valley at the base of the actual Olympus Mons on Mars.
There's also odd societal tidbits that nag at me throughout. This story apparently takes place around 700 years after Earth begins terraforming the solar system, and 300 years after they have successfully done so on Mars, keeping the Reds underground as slave labor to produce Helium. This led me to believe that the Reds were somehow kept a secret, that the upper world is more ignorant with dark forces at the top being malicious, but I was wrong.
Apparently all the people on the surface, including OTHER REDS, know that this is a thing and just don't do anything. Centuries of being complacent with actual slavery and regular death with no social movement at all, explained and handwaved away as people being disappeared when they speak out, even though there must be billions of them watching considering its said that there's at least a billion Reds just underground. No matter how brutal an empire is, there would be more than just The Sons of Ares trying to do something.
I think this all feels so underthought because I noted a delineation in the book where we got to the part I feel Brown actually originally wanted to write and haphazardly built a world around it to make it fit.
There's also a bit about the most inhuman, animalistic, and violent caste being "Obsidian". Not that we ever meet one, mostly sticking to what seem to me to be very Irish coded (and a little stereotypes) Reds and the very European, largely British Golds.
All that being said, there's a solid change in the writing once we enter the game. The entrance and exam this world uses to determine the baseline for the top of the top. This section, while full of tropes from other YA Dystopia, is much more engaging.
Golds enter an elite testing ground after their entrance exams, 1200 total, where they will be sorted into 1 of 12 Hogwarts houses named after the major Gods of the Roman pantheon. Once sorted, they're dragged away in the night, dropped into stone cells naked in pairs, and only one gets to leave. The 1200 become 600 as the high testers cull the lowest scorers and they're dropped into a valley with fortresses and resources with a simple goal: conquer all the other houses.
I like this play on the battle Royale, especially when it's initially mentioned that they're not supposed to kill other students intentionally. It's a nice twist on the format, it's much more cohesive and engaging, even though it has it's own faults.
The not intentionally killing students goes out the window almost immediately. The themes here are darker and I think intended to be more shocking, especially the instances of sexual assault that are again just using women, most of whom are nameless and faceless, as shock props for the story and not characters. The women who are named largely treat this as something either deserved for weakness (per their cultural upbringing) or something to simply heal from, minus one who finds it particularly repulsive.
There's plenty of lagging about as this section takes almost an entire in-book year, lots of space initially dedicated to more or less wandering at the start. None of the twists land because they're telegraphed so hard.
As with the rest of the book, the messaging is about as subtle as a shotgun. Even when they make minor philosophical stabs at violence not being the answer, all their problems and messages are solved or perpetuated with violence. It's even alluded to early on that dreamers and peaceful martyrs are worthless, a dime a dozen, while violence is the only way to really change anything.
All told, not great. I'm leaving some space for the shallowness and the prose (the choppy little sentences and poorly executed plays to make our Mary Sue seem a genius warrior philosopher grated on me) as it's largely considered YA and was a debut. I wouldn't recommend it to friends but read it if you want, but after seeing more of the same in the Golden Son excerpt, I'm going to leave the series here.
Having finally read this book after it's long stint on my TBR, I must say that I'm disappointed. It seems to me that this is a book that neatly falls into the hype over substance category.
This is the story of a "lower Red", the lowest members of a color based caste system, as he realizes his life of mining under the surface of Mars to aid in terraforming efforts is a lie. He is awakened to this lie and enters the fold of a group of revolutionaries that wish to place him high in society that they might overthrow their oppressive color caste system.
To start, our protagonist Darrow is definitely a Mary Sue esque character, exceeding all expectation in strategy, intelligence, and physical prowess despite being a 16 year old whose whole life has been relegated to mining, drinking, and fighting. It's expressly mentioned that he's different from other Reds and lower colors, that he is a new step in evolution that is naturally above the others. Even after his transformation into a Gold where he is enhanced so that he can begin working his way through the upper reaches of society, he is described often as more than the standard for their perfectly crafted selves.
More dexterous in a new body he has to learn to function in, stronger despite size, smart enough that he is one of the highest scorers of the entry exam, to the point he must be interrogated to determine if and how he cheated, and immediately having a mind for logic puzzles and politics. All against people who were bred, raised, and literally modified as he was for their entire lives to do these things. He even prevails over those who have already passed the testing and are considered the highest of the high.
Yet at the same time, he's naive or easily fooled as the plot needs. In the last hundred or so pages he's caught in a trap alone 3 separate times using the same trick.
Then there's his motivation, given to him expressly and with no subtlety by his wife in the early stages of the book, cemented by her martyrdom. She is literally written as an exposition tool to open his eyes and die, then be pined after as needed. Much the same is true of his few interactions with lower colors after he leaves the mines. Symbols of virtue or strife, but certainly not people.
The world building is haphazard and doesn't make much sense. It's loosely tied to Greco-Roman mythos, mostly in name and style more than substance or message. There are little details surrounding the story happening on Mars that irk me, namely the constant thinking about how they are in "low gravity" or specifying that it's 0.376 Earth gravity even though he has spent his entire life on Mars and only learns the difference when training his new body under higher gravity to strengthen it. Names and references aren't consistent, with images given from Egypt, the Bible, and The Reaper. It's frustrating that there's so many little details constantly being shoved at you to remember it's on Mars, only to have slips, inconsistencies, and missed opportunities like the artificial fortress that watches over the game is referred to as Olympus when it could have been set in a valley at the base of the actual Olympus Mons on Mars.
There's also odd societal tidbits that nag at me throughout. This story apparently takes place around 700 years after Earth begins terraforming the solar system, and 300 years after they have successfully done so on Mars, keeping the Reds underground as slave labor to produce Helium. This led me to believe that the Reds were somehow kept a secret, that the upper world is more ignorant with dark forces at the top being malicious, but I was wrong.
Apparently all the people on the surface, including OTHER REDS, know that this is a thing and just don't do anything. Centuries of being complacent with actual slavery and regular death with no social movement at all, explained and handwaved away as people being disappeared when they speak out, even though there must be billions of them watching considering its said that there's at least a billion Reds just underground. No matter how brutal an empire is, there would be more than just The Sons of Ares trying to do something.
I think this all feels so underthought because I noted a delineation in the book where we got to the part I feel Brown actually originally wanted to write and haphazardly built a world around it to make it fit.
There's also a bit about the most inhuman, animalistic, and violent caste being "Obsidian". Not that we ever meet one, mostly sticking to what seem to me to be very Irish coded (and a little stereotypes) Reds and the very European, largely British Golds.
All that being said, there's a solid change in the writing once we enter the game. The entrance and exam this world uses to determine the baseline for the top of the top. This section, while full of tropes from other YA Dystopia, is much more engaging.
Golds enter an elite testing ground after their entrance exams, 1200 total, where they will be sorted into 1 of 12 Hogwarts houses named after the major Gods of the Roman pantheon. Once sorted, they're dragged away in the night, dropped into stone cells naked in pairs, and only one gets to leave. The 1200 become 600 as the high testers cull the lowest scorers and they're dropped into a valley with fortresses and resources with a simple goal: conquer all the other houses.
I like this play on the battle Royale, especially when it's initially mentioned that they're not supposed to kill other students intentionally. It's a nice twist on the format, it's much more cohesive and engaging, even though it has it's own faults.
The not intentionally killing students goes out the window almost immediately. The themes here are darker and I think intended to be more shocking, especially the instances of sexual assault that are again just using women, most of whom are nameless and faceless, as shock props for the story and not characters. The women who are named largely treat this as something either deserved for weakness (per their cultural upbringing) or something to simply heal from, minus one who finds it particularly repulsive.
There's plenty of lagging about as this section takes almost an entire in-book year, lots of space initially dedicated to more or less wandering at the start. None of the twists land because they're telegraphed so hard.
As with the rest of the book, the messaging is about as subtle as a shotgun. Even when they make minor philosophical stabs at violence not being the answer, all their problems and messages are solved or perpetuated with violence. It's even alluded to early on that dreamers and peaceful martyrs are worthless, a dime a dozen, while violence is the only way to really change anything.
All told, not great. I'm leaving some space for the shallowness and the prose (the choppy little sentences and poorly executed plays to make our Mary Sue seem a genius warrior philosopher grated on me) as it's largely considered YA and was a debut. I wouldn't recommend it to friends but read it if you want, but after seeing more of the same in the Golden Son excerpt, I'm going to leave the series here.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Slavery, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Emotional abuse, Violence, Gore, Child death, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Classism, Death of parent, and War
Moderate: Sexual violence, Cannibalism, Sexual assault, Rape, and Racism
trinitystewart55's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
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? Yes
4.5
Bloodydamn
This book was as great as remembered first reading it in highschool years ago near when it first came out. The story is phenomenal start to the beginnings of Darrow’s journey to the Rising. Pierce Brown coveys a writing system that mimics Darrow’s mind and is pleasant for to read.
It definitely takes inspiration from the Hunger Games and Ender’s games as nice mind child but I feel that compared all these books together does some deserves to them all as they are good on their own parts.
The book does start out a bit slow to set up the world building and colors systems with political dynamics but each part continually builds until Darrow fully becomes the Reaper that will one day sow Eo’s dream.
Mustang and Sevro will always have special place in my heart as some of the best secondary characters.
This book is classic sci-fi, dystopian novel that every fan of genre must check out.
This book was as great as remembered first reading it in highschool years ago near when it first came out. The story is phenomenal start to the beginnings of Darrow’s journey to the Rising. Pierce Brown coveys a writing system that mimics Darrow’s mind and is pleasant for to read.
It definitely takes inspiration from the Hunger Games and Ender’s games as nice mind child but I feel that compared all these books together does some deserves to them all as they are good on their own parts.
The book does start out a bit slow to set up the world building and colors systems with political dynamics but each part continually builds until Darrow fully becomes the Reaper that will one day sow Eo’s dream.
Mustang and Sevro will always have special place in my heart as some of the best secondary characters.
This book is classic sci-fi, dystopian novel that every fan of genre must check out.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, War, and Blood
Moderate: Alcohol
linkwoodpub's review
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Incredible execution on a very cheesy premise. It took me a long time to dive in, but once I did it was an absolute rollercoaster (in a good way).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Torture, Toxic relationship, War, Vomit, Fire/Fire injury, Hate crime, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual harassment, Racism, Rape, Death, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Classism, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Medical content, Xenophobia, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Slavery
kaylanicholsmith's review
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Hmm... where to begin with this....
I feel like I was really excited to get to this finally because of all the hype that I've heard over all the years and it was... fine? This book is kinda dense. You get thrown right into the world of Darrow, the main character, and you are learning as you go. There is nothing about the world, the language, the setting that is really explained to you. Darrow, as a character, kinda expects people to just know what he is talking about. Sometimes this narrative style works for me and other times it doesn't. Ultimately, the writing style as a whole just wasn't my favorite. I kept trying to remind myself that we are primarily reading from the perspective of teenage boys (yuck) but it just felt over the top with the juvenile quality sometimes. Also, my biggest pet peeve in books, any genre, is when the author has to insert fart jokes or fart commentary (usually as an insult to another character). I just can't stand it. The amount of times the author used "turd" could also warrant some kind of an award.
Despite the issues with the writing my biggest question with this story was the handling of sexual assault. On one hand, I feel like the author did do something a little different than a lot of other male fantasy/scifi writers - the female characters were not only there to be sexually assaulted and serve no other purpose. However, on the other hand, the amount of sexual assault still felt gratuitous and the female characters underdeveloped. While there is nothing graphic on the page, there is ample talk about the sexual assaults taking place, and not all of it is condemning the actions taking place. Granted, sexual violence is quite commonplace in war situations and the bystander effect is a terrible thing that happens everyday, but the author didn't really seem to tackle the issue quite as head on as he might have thought he was. Perhaps that was because there is SO MUCH going on in this first book - I think that we cover about 2 years in the course of this first book - and it flies. There is no real delving into any of the social issues that are being raised in the book. Everything felt super surface level.
I haven't totally written off the rest of the series but I'm in no major rush to continue on. I wonder if, as the story continues to build, that the commentary will become stronger and the writing more palatable but who knows. Maybe I never will... we'll see.
I feel like I was really excited to get to this finally because of all the hype that I've heard over all the years and it was... fine? This book is kinda dense. You get thrown right into the world of Darrow, the main character, and you are learning as you go. There is nothing about the world, the language, the setting that is really explained to you. Darrow, as a character, kinda expects people to just know what he is talking about. Sometimes this narrative style works for me and other times it doesn't. Ultimately, the writing style as a whole just wasn't my favorite. I kept trying to remind myself that we are primarily reading from the perspective of teenage boys (yuck) but it just felt over the top with the juvenile quality sometimes. Also, my biggest pet peeve in books, any genre, is when the author has to insert fart jokes or fart commentary (usually as an insult to another character). I just can't stand it. The amount of times the author used "turd" could also warrant some kind of an award.
Despite the issues with the writing my biggest question with this story was the handling of sexual assault. On one hand, I feel like the author did do something a little different than a lot of other male fantasy/scifi writers - the female characters were not only there to be sexually assaulted and serve no other purpose. However, on the other hand, the amount of sexual assault still felt gratuitous and the female characters underdeveloped. While there is nothing graphic on the page, there is ample talk about the sexual assaults taking place, and not all of it is condemning the actions taking place. Granted, sexual violence is quite commonplace in war situations and the bystander effect is a terrible thing that happens everyday, but the author didn't really seem to tackle the issue quite as head on as he might have thought he was. Perhaps that was because there is SO MUCH going on in this first book - I think that we cover about 2 years in the course of this first book - and it flies. There is no real delving into any of the social issues that are being raised in the book. Everything felt super surface level.
I haven't totally written off the rest of the series but I'm in no major rush to continue on. I wonder if, as the story continues to build, that the commentary will become stronger and the writing more palatable but who knows. Maybe I never will... we'll see.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Torture, Blood, and Violence
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Classism, Bullying, Racism, Sexual violence, Vomit, Ableism, Cannibalism, Animal cruelty, Sexual assault, Slavery, War, Gore, Murder, Animal death, and Blood
samuelbrown23's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
In the beginning of the book was bit hard to understand the world building but by the end was settle in and was able to be entertained. The characters are definitely memorable and complex. The story had so many tense moments the will keep you on your toes, will read book 2.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Rape, Racism, Child abuse, and War