A review by billyjepma
Red Rising by Pierce Brown

adventurous dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

There’s a tired trope in the first 50 pages I have so little patience for that I almost called it quits entirely. But I’m really glad I didn’t because the book that followed was a wild hoot and a holler. It’s far from an original story, as even its iterations are more slight than not. It’s essentially a mix of genre staples (The Hunger Games is the easy comparison, but Ender’s Game feels more accurate) that never stray too far from the beats you expect. 

Where Brown carves his own path is in the momentum he gives those familiar trappings. This is an angry book, written in shades of sharpness and rage that teeters on becoming overwrought yet never crosses that line. All its themes and tempos might be models of things that came before, but its spirit has more edges, more knotty bits of complicated morality, and ugly humanity that kept me ravenously turning the pages. I tore through this in essentially 36 hours, which is partially due to the start of my holiday vacation—I haven’t moved off this couch in hours—but also on account of how quick and relentless a pace Brown writes with. I try to avoid getting enabled with longer series—and this one having an entire second trilogy after the first doesn’t bode terribly well for me—but I’m absolutely tearing into the next book tomorrow. 
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