A review by cayenne503
Red Rising by Pierce Brown

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

Overall: 3.25/5
I have to admit that I saw SO MANY people on TikTok and YouTube gushing about this book, I had my expectations set much higher. All in all I think it’s good but not great. I’d definitely read the next book but I’m not marching down to the bookstore this instant. 

Characters: 2/5
I just don’t like Darrow. He’s arrogant, which I suppose can be written off as him being seventeen…though the implication I got is that
Reds literally mature faster
so I would have thought he’d be more adult. I don’t feel like he had to struggle for anything he achieved and he had a few too many deus ex machina moments. He doesn’t make any meaningful mistakes so there’s nothing pushing him to grow/change and indeed he ends the book with basically the same attitude as he started. 

Setting/worldbuilding: 4/5 
I think the universe for this book is really cool. I liked the idea that
the Reds were kept in control by being tricked into thinking the rest of civilization had t left Earth yet. I liked that the different castes actually have different physical characteristics, almost like divergent evolution
. 

Plot/Pacing: 3.5/5
The Hunger Games esque rite of passage for golds isn’t super unique but hits all the right notes for that trope. There were a few moments that threw me for a loop (good!) but mostly my expectations as far as plot were met without being exceeded. 

Writing: 3/5
You know how in action movies, especially in big fight scenes with a lot of characters, everything will shift to slow motion and the focus will be on the MC but you can still see what’s going on with the other characters in the background? This was like the book version of that. There’s a lot of “this happened then this happened” and you just have to kind of accept it without really seeing it. Especially at the beginning
when Darrow is going through his transformation from Red to Gold
, it feels like a lot of it was just hand waved and that there were no real consequences (positive or negative) as a result of the experience, even though it should be horrifically traumatizing. 
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