Reviews with content warning for Rape - Red Rising

Reviews tagging 'Rape'

pageboi31's review

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.5

I didn't think I would read Red Rising anytime soon (especially since I heard it shares a lot of similar elements to The Will of the Many, so more time would give it a fair chance), but with the prompt of "Read a book that intimidates you" this was a solid choice. My friend absolutely loves this series, and I was nervous that I'd dislike it and disappoint them (wouldn't be the first time 😅). Needless to say the book was...good.

My favorite things about this book were the world building and the side characters. The color hierarchy and pseudo-planetary distinctions are pretty interesting, and it would be cool to see more of the other colors (especially POV's) in the rest of the series. I loved Sevro, honestly wish there was more of him in this book and that Darrow was a better friend to him to justify Sevro's respect/love towards him. Cassius has so much potential as a tragic villain, I could easily see him being an unforgettable antagonist. He has that himbo /popular energy that most of his peers like, but you could easily tell deep-down that he's super insecure, likes himself a bit too much

, and the death of his younger brother seemed to shatter something within him that makes him unstable

. The rest of the cast of characters were ok, including people like Mustang, Pax, etc.

I don't really like Darrow...I don't know. Something about him just doesn't work for me. At first I didn't really like him in the beginning of the book, but I realized later on he at least had more of a personality then than he did during the game at the Institute. I don't know if the transformation process to gold wiped him in some way, but I swear he actually becomes a different person besides just physically. I think the way he was written kinda gives off mary sue vibes (hate using that term), where his "failures" didn't really feel like failures

(I swear he ran his armies the exact same way pre-stabbing and post-stabbing)

, and his success sometimes felt unwarranted too (less of the post-hoc "They knew I was doing this, so I reversed it on them and did this" also would've greatly helped).

The story itself was ok, I guess. Can't really tell how powerful/important the Sons of Ares are, since they're only in a small section at the start. The Institute seemed incredibly brutal and flawed...hope they have more "educational" elements in the rest of the books 😅. This weirdly feels like a YA book to me (reminds me a lot of Sebastien De Castell's Spellslinger where it's YA but can be quite dark/gruesome in parts), maybe because of the character's ages and the similarity to Hunger Games?

Not a big fan of the guy who kept raping people and went mostly unpunished, not to be confused with the other guy who kept raping people and was killed for it.

I might continue this series in the future (I hear it gets really good!), but as of right now it can wait.

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okayyyanna's review

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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jturock's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

4.0

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kale323's review

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

1.0

The Pros: Interesting world building, a few interesting characters, and a couple engaging sections within the story.

The Cons: Almost everything else. This book is completely overly ambitious. While many claim that it is Game of Thrones and Hunger Games put together, it fails at replicating both.

First: the main character, Darrow, is a flat, overly hyped up character that is a blank wall of “I’m super cool and I have no flaws that can’t be solved within one, maybe two pages.” Even at the beginning, he hypes himself up for being the best of the best, and it’s clear that he is. But it’s constantly TOLD to you, not shown. Dont tell me to think a character is cool if you haven’t SHOWN me that he’s cool. Which leads me to my next point.

Second: SHOW ME THINGS. DONT TELL ME. Oh my god, this book has fight scenes, conversations, and entire plot relevant sections get boiled down to a few descriptive, “and then they did this,” type of sentences. I wanted to pull my hair out, screaming, “WHY IS THIS NOT BEING SHOWN IN DETAIL. THIS NOT HOW YOU KEEP READERS ENGAGED AND IMMERSED. THIS IS MOVING TOO FAST FOR ME TO CARE,” which brings me to my last point.

Third: The pacing. Dear god. The pacing was absolutely terrible. It takes until half, yes, HALF, of the book until we reach the main story hook. HALF OF THE BOOK IS EXPOSITION??? HALF??? And on top of that, it has no real rising climax, and no real climax at all. At the very least, it’s hard to distinguish when the climax is, from the rest of the book. Abysmal.

Look, when it’s good, it’s good. The worldbuilding is fun, and some of the ideas are intriguing. And some of the characters (not the main one) were fun to read about. These were all enough positives for me not to DNF the book, which is saying something!

Nonetheless, an unrelatable, god-complex main character, tell-not-show writing, and bad pacing are far too much for me to find much value in this book.

Also, the way rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault are handled is very, very poor. At one point, a side character attempts to rape an unknown character. The way it was handled up until a certain point was fine. Justice was being done, and it was a titular moment for the main character to figure out how to handle justice. Interesting story beat!

Then after justice is dealt, the attempted rapist begins to be delivered to the reader as a funny, if not zany character. Wow. Personally, I would like comic relief to not be delivered by an attempted rapist.

I would recommend this book to someone that needs to just sit back and digest a simple story with a few, tidbit, interesting things. But not for anything else.

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jenmarie11's review

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adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

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lameroe's review

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challenging dark emotional 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? Yes

5.0

i cried, a few times. i loved everything even in the times when i felt a bit bored i was still very into the story. darrow has became one of my favorite mcs now, maybe give the boy some happiness i think that’d be good. when he cried so did i, when he felt anger so did i, i felt every emotion he did. i felt for him constantly, he’s just a boy afterall, and he didn’t get a lot of happy moments. overall i get the book 5stars i truly loved it and am excited to read the next in the series.

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skysalla's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

3.5

Very long and at parts confusing to keep track of the characters. A lot of interesting twists and surprises some of which were totally unexpected.

A large chunk of this book reminds me of Lord of the Flies.

I don’t know if I could have finished it had it not been on audio book however - while it was overall interesting, I think it wasn’t quite gripping enough given the length.

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