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A review by trinityb2021
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
4 ⭐️
The first half of this book did not have me convinced. But honestly it reminded me of The Will of The Many. A slow start but then a crazy wild ending that has me gnawing at the bars of my enclosure for the next one.
I think Virginia was a super cool character. I have a feeling her story will get more depth to it in the sequels which I can't wait to see. Darrow is also compelling. He feels less of a blank slate like Katniss or even Ender does. He has real motivations and feelings and guilt. Creating Eo as a motivator was genius on Pierce Brown's part. Who would've thought to give a 16 year old boy a wife? But it totally makes sense and makes everything more compelling (and sad).
This book has a lot of similarities to hunger games but it is much better. It is a lot darker which I think actually helps it. The concept of a bunch of kids being thrown into a battlefield with sponsors and free reign to do whatever they like is dark. I like that this book was brave enough to explore the sick and twisted aspects of that. Also in this case all the children are like spoiled, blood hungry and descendent from war mongers so it's gonna be EXTRA bloody.
The worst part of this book is that it can't seem to decide if it is YA or adult Sci-Fi. It obviously pulls heavily from popular dystopian YA books and is written like a YA book with middle-school vocab and simple sentence structure. Yet, it includes stuff that is way to gruesome and dark for 13-16 year olds to read (at least IMO). I appreciate simple prose. I think that flowery prose can get in the way of story-telling sometimes and the simplicity fits the style the book is going for. But I think increasing the reading level a little bit would've made it better, especially the beginning which lowkey feels like YA slop for like 30%-40%.
The first half of this book did not have me convinced. But honestly it reminded me of The Will of The Many. A slow start but then a crazy wild ending that has me gnawing at the bars of my enclosure for the next one.
I think Virginia was a super cool character. I have a feeling her story will get more depth to it in the sequels which I can't wait to see. Darrow is also compelling. He feels less of a blank slate like Katniss or even Ender does. He has real motivations and feelings and guilt. Creating Eo as a motivator was genius on Pierce Brown's part. Who would've thought to give a 16 year old boy a wife? But it totally makes sense and makes everything more compelling (and sad).
This book has a lot of similarities to hunger games but it is much better. It is a lot darker which I think actually helps it. The concept of a bunch of kids being thrown into a battlefield with sponsors and free reign to do whatever they like is dark. I like that this book was brave enough to explore the sick and twisted aspects of that. Also in this case all the children are like spoiled, blood hungry and descendent from war mongers so it's gonna be EXTRA bloody.
The worst part of this book is that it can't seem to decide if it is YA or adult Sci-Fi. It obviously pulls heavily from popular dystopian YA books and is written like a YA book with middle-school vocab and simple sentence structure. Yet, it includes stuff that is way to gruesome and dark for 13-16 year olds to read (at least IMO). I appreciate simple prose. I think that flowery prose can get in the way of story-telling sometimes and the simplicity fits the style the book is going for. But I think increasing the reading level a little bit would've made it better, especially the beginning which lowkey feels like YA slop for like 30%-40%.