Reviews

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

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maddie_orart's review against another edition

3.0

Review also posted on Of Reading and Random Things

I finally read Red Queen!!!! Yay! Another book to be removed from the never-ending TBR list.

Red Queen tells the story of Mare Barrow, a young girl who lives in a society divided by the color of their blood. Reds, like Mare, are the lower class people, struggling to make ends meet, and those who aren’t able to find jobs are conscripted into the army when they turn eighteen. So basically, their lives suck. Then we have the Silvers, the nobility who spends way too much money and lives in beautiful houses with Red servants to order around. They are the royalty, nobles and all the important members of society. Oh, did I forget to mention their superpowers? Yes, they have superpowers. Superstrength, superspeed, control over water, fire, people’s minds and pretty much all the superpowers you can think of. The Silvers also hates the Reds. They consider the Reds as the dirt beneath their expensive, high-class shoes, and should be treated as such. All her life, Mare thought she was just like any other Red, normal, powerless, and doomed to live a miserable life. But her life changed when she discovered that despite her red blood, she has power.

I enjoyed reading Red Queen. I think that the story is interesting and entertaining even though I don’t think it’s the most original dystopian ever. I really like the whole Silver and Red blood thing and I want to know more about how that happened. I think it was a mutation or something? But I’m not really sure about the details. I also want to know more about the war that teenagers are forced to fight in and why it’s been going on for a hundred years. I wish there’s a map of the country Mare lives in so I can see where everything is, and also because I get confused whenever other places are mentioned, but it doesn’t bother me too much. There are also a lot of interesting scenes throughout the story that I liked a lot.

As much as I liked reading Red Queen, however, I have to say that nothing in the entire story surprised me. It’s just that I’ve seen all these things before, and the way Red Queen is done doesn’t really make it any more special than the others in my opinion. I don’t mind reading clichés. In fact, a lot of clichés are actually more enjoyable than the original one. But sadly, I don’t think this book is one of them. The whole “anyone can betray anyone” thing is repeated so many times and when the actual betrayal happened, I wasn’t surprised at all. Call me pessimistic, but whenever I read about a royal family or any important families, I always think that the stepmothers, younger brothers, half-siblings, uncles, cousins, and anyone who is not directly in line for the throne/title are guilty until proven innocent.

Mare is an interesting character. She’s very sassy and sarcastic, and that makes her a lot like me J. I admire her love for her family and friends, which I think makes her loyal. She maintains a brave façade even though she’s lost and afraid. But despite all these good traits, I couldn’t relate to her. Some of her decisions or actions annoyed me a lot, and I don’t think she’s as badass as she wants me to believe. I don’t really like her love interests either, both of them. I think that Cal is just a perfect, boring soldier, and I don’t think Maven suits Mare at all. But there’s always room for improvement. Since Red Queen is a series, I’m sure there will be character development in the next books. I like Kilorn and Lucas, though. I wouldn’t mind if they were Mare’s love interests instead of Cal and Maven. :D

So to sum up, I like Red Queen. I think that it’s an interesting start to a series that I know can be so much better. I’m giving this book 3.5 stars (I finally understand the need for half stars in the Goodreads rating system), because even though I enjoyed reading it, it’s not as amazing as I hoped it would be. I blame all the hype. Even though this book uses a lot of tropes ( :( ), and I guessed all the plot twists before it ever happened, I like it enough that I will definitely read the sequel. I’m curious to find out what will happen next. I’ve been seeing so many pictures of Glass Sword on Instagram and so many people are excited about it, so I really hope it will be as great as people say it is.

“Words can lie. See beyond them.”
― Victoria Aveyard, Red Queen

adelle_bookworm's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

Každý může zradit.
Celá se třesu a vůbec nevím, jestli ze zimy, nebo z té knihy.
Sváří se ve mně protichůdné pocity a nejvíc asi obdiv, obdiv Victorii Aveyard, že tohle stvořila. Že stvořila svět plný intrik. A že nám ukázala, že od toho vlastně nejsme až tak daleko.

Povstaneme. Rudí jako úsvit.

A čekání na druhý díl mě jistojistě zabije.