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A review by btrz7
Red Rising: Sons of Ares #5 by Rik Hoskin, Eli Powell, Pierce Brown
3.0
I suppose I would call this book extremely derivative. It's a general opinion I've seen and I can only agree with it. It's been true for most dystopias that have come out since the success of The Hunger Games, only some are more successful than others, and I think this falls into the successful category, if only for the fact that despite my inability to stop comparing it to every other dystopian book I've read I still enjoyed it.
We have a universe/solar system divided into a hierarchy of colors, where each color has its position in the Society pyramid, with its assigned roles in the maintenance of life and differences between colors are physical and genetic, apparently. In this world, Red is the lowest color, with their assigned roles involving slaving away at underground mines without ever seeing the surface and being maintained in a perpetual lie, and Gold is the highest color, destined to lead and conquer and have everything at their disposition, almost as if they were Gods. Of course this creates discontentment and there's a resistance group called the Sons of Ares, who choose our protagonist, a low Red, to be their hero.
Up until here, nothing new, and beyond that we continue into familiar territory. The hero is transformed into a fine specimen and goes undercover in Gold Society, having to survive the Institute (could you get more generic?) to have a chance in rising in power. The Institute is basically the Hunger Games with Greco-Roman influence.
But again, despite all this lack of originality I still found myself entertained at the games and with the science-fiction elements of the story, so I guess it was worth reading.
We have a universe/solar system divided into a hierarchy of colors, where each color has its position in the Society pyramid, with its assigned roles in the maintenance of life and differences between colors are physical and genetic, apparently. In this world, Red is the lowest color, with their assigned roles involving slaving away at underground mines without ever seeing the surface and being maintained in a perpetual lie, and Gold is the highest color, destined to lead and conquer and have everything at their disposition, almost as if they were Gods. Of course this creates discontentment and there's a resistance group called the Sons of Ares, who choose our protagonist, a low Red, to be their hero.
Up until here, nothing new, and beyond that we continue into familiar territory. The hero is transformed into a fine specimen and goes undercover in Gold Society, having to survive the Institute (could you get more generic?) to have a chance in rising in power. The Institute is basically the Hunger Games with Greco-Roman influence.
But again, despite all this lack of originality I still found myself entertained at the games and with the science-fiction elements of the story, so I guess it was worth reading.