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A review by kimdokjaa
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
3.0
another book i would've loved at 16! somewhere in the 3.5 stars range
this was fun! very on the nose but again i’m outside of the target age range for a ya book so i'm not going to complain too much on any of that
i will complain about one thing- i hated how sexual violence was written here. it was used, frequently, to have character growth for the male characters perpetrating it or motivation for the male characters whose female friends were assaulted. darrow forgives the rapist (and attempted rapists) way too quickly!! like what do you mean you plan to “embrace as brothers” in the veil with titus who spent the entire book running around making slaves and raping them?? why are you instantly besties with tactus after he tries to rape a girl in your name?? why do you want to “bond over shared pain” with him of all people?
i do like the idea of darrow going down a route of becoming more and more gold while holding onto his red vengeance, and am partially seeing it, i hope intentionally, as gold society's numbness to sexual violence (as we see with near everyone having a pink slave) warping darrow's views on the matter. but, regardless, it was handled very poorly. i don't think brown's great at writing women as a whole either, and am hoping to see an improvement in later books
i would love to feel a bit more of darrow's convictions as well. red rising ends with darrow naming himself a vengeful champion of the reds, but we never actually see him care that much about his people being enslaved throughout the book. he also undulates between vehemently hating golds and wanting to destroy gold society to only wanting to reform them and find the good people inside. again, i'm leaning towards the idea that darrow is going to be stuck between his red heritage and being in the middle of gold society, and i know he's only 16, so i'm giving this a slight pass. i still think this is mostly just something missing in the writing, and would like to be more captivated and actually feel darrow's rage, and his hesitance
i’ve heard the latter books are where this one gets good, so i'm excited to see what the next books have in store!
this was fun! very on the nose but again i’m outside of the target age range for a ya book so i'm not going to complain too much on any of that
i will complain about one thing- i hated how sexual violence was written here. it was used, frequently, to have character growth for the male characters perpetrating it or motivation for the male characters whose female friends were assaulted. darrow forgives the rapist (and attempted rapists) way too quickly!! like what do you mean you plan to “embrace as brothers” in the veil with titus who spent the entire book running around making slaves and raping them?? why are you instantly besties with tactus after he tries to rape a girl in your name?? why do you want to “bond over shared pain” with him of all people?
i do like the idea of darrow going down a route of becoming more and more gold while holding onto his red vengeance, and am partially seeing it, i hope intentionally, as gold society's numbness to sexual violence (as we see with near everyone having a pink slave) warping darrow's views on the matter. but, regardless, it was handled very poorly. i don't think brown's great at writing women as a whole either, and am hoping to see an improvement in later books
i would love to feel a bit more of darrow's convictions as well. red rising ends with darrow naming himself a vengeful champion of the reds, but we never actually see him care that much about his people being enslaved throughout the book. he also undulates between vehemently hating golds and wanting to destroy gold society to only wanting to reform them and find the good people inside. again, i'm leaning towards the idea that darrow is going to be stuck between his red heritage and being in the middle of gold society, and i know he's only 16, so i'm giving this a slight pass. i still think this is mostly just something missing in the writing, and would like to be more captivated and actually feel darrow's rage, and his hesitance
i’ve heard the latter books are where this one gets good, so i'm excited to see what the next books have in store!