Scan barcode
A review by kale323
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
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
0.75
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Rape