Review by dailbrae - Red Rising

dailbrae 's review for:

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

4.0

adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I wavered between giving this book 3 stars (still solid on my rating scale), but I tore through it in about 24 hours, so giving it less than 4 felt wrong.

I found a lot of the concepts in this book really interesting, like the eugenics-based dystopian caste system. It really leans into the sci-fi aspect, which is able to take it to quite an extreme

with all of the body modification Darrow undergoes to impersonate a Gold, due to the extreme physical differences between castes

. Also I'm a sucker for Greco-Roman-inspired anything.

The Hunger Games-style battle royale was also interesting, with a lot of shifting alliances and politicking. I also appreciated that Darrow fell to a real nadir due to his mistakes and learned from them. I think that's what had me riveted in the latter part of the book, since I was invested in seeing how he would succeed.

I also found myself really interested in the side characters, namely Servo and Mustang. Though I did predict the twist that

Mustang and the Jackal were related

, the hints to that effect felt reasonably paced, so that it was a satisfying experience to have seen it coming. I also thought it was well-handled that

Mustang didn't betray Darrow

. I felt that was consistent with

her characterisation as shown to the reader, as a person with strong morals. Though she was limited by being complicit in a deeply broken system

. The other route would have generated more shock value perhaps, and I respect choosing to stay true to the character we know.

That said, this book started with one of the most egregious examples of fridging I've read in my life. And the book calls back to it constantly. I nearly stopped reading after it happened because I really just wished I could read an alternative version of the book where

Eo doesn't die and gets to be the badass revolutionary that forges her vision of freedom into reality, instead of intentionally dying so that Darrow will?!

. Still not over it tbh, and thinking about it makes me want to bump my rating back down to 3 stars, even though I enjoyed the latter half of the book a lot.

The treatment of the female characters in this book in general is not great. While many of them are capable in a variety of ways, many also get used as objects on which male characters act, effectively to show how monstrous and awful those male characters are. Then in certain cases, it feels almost forgiven

as with Tactus, where he's acknowledged by Darrow to be (paraphrasing) "a monster, but my monster". I get the spin of "he's awful but we're still making use of him since it's a dystopia and we have to do awful things for good reasons", but it still crosses a line for me

.

Also, everyone is so goddamn young! Maybe I'm just getting "old" (I'm not even old) but I'm tired of teenage or young adult protagonists. It makes sense in the context of the world, but I just decided to age everyone up 4 years in my head.

All in all, I'm planning to continue with the series. From what I've read of other reviews, it seems some of my issues with this book may improve over the course of the series, so I'll give it a chance. And I'd be lying if I said I weren't invested in the story to come.

Content Warnings