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A review by incredibella
Rise of the Red Hand by Olivia Chadha
2.0
My attention was captured by the premise and the promise of diversity (South Asian rep!) in science fiction. I mean, "a streetrat turned revolutionary and the disillusioned hacker son of a politician try to take down a ruthlessly technocratic government that sacrifices its poorest citizens to build its utopia" sounds both intriguing and relevant. Unfortunately, Rise of the Red Hand didn't quite meet my expectations. While the book has potential, there were a number of issues that I was unable to overlook.
The main characters had the potential to be interesting, but none of them felt fully fleshed out. I wanted to get to know them better and feel more of an emotional investment to them and their stories. Additionally, the first half of the book especially contained a lot of info dumping at some points, while there were other aspects of the world-building that were not thoroughly explained. The pacing of the book felt too drawn out and slow over the first half of the book, but seemed to rush during the second half. I felt that the main romance in the book could work further down the line (maybe later in the series), but because the characters did not meet until later in the book and hardly spent time together, the fast development of their relationship did not make sense to me. Throughout the book, the writing felt choppy and I also noticed several minor errors (repeated words, words that should have been deleted, etc) that could have been caught in another round of editing.
However, I did think that Chadha created an interesting setting with the potential for interesting world-building and touched upon important and relevant themes (classism, capitalism, climate change, etc). I also appreciated learning about elements of South Asian culture that were included throughout the book. I would love to have gotten more character development and explored the societal structure more in depth. Despite my low rating, I would be interested to see where the series goes and to read more of Chadha's work in the future. I wish I had enjoyed this one more!
Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for the ARC!
trigger/content warnings: brutality enacted by law enforcement, suicide, disease, pandemic, people going missing, kidnapping, child abandonment, death, starvation, mutilation/loss of limbs, death of a loved one/family members, death, mass deaths, eugenics, murder, blood, war mentions, human experimentation/testing, violence, medical procedures, bombing, stabbing
The main characters had the potential to be interesting, but none of them felt fully fleshed out. I wanted to get to know them better and feel more of an emotional investment to them and their stories. Additionally, the first half of the book especially contained a lot of info dumping at some points, while there were other aspects of the world-building that were not thoroughly explained. The pacing of the book felt too drawn out and slow over the first half of the book, but seemed to rush during the second half. I felt that the main romance in the book could work further down the line (maybe later in the series), but because the characters did not meet until later in the book and hardly spent time together, the fast development of their relationship did not make sense to me. Throughout the book, the writing felt choppy and I also noticed several minor errors (repeated words, words that should have been deleted, etc) that could have been caught in another round of editing.
However, I did think that Chadha created an interesting setting with the potential for interesting world-building and touched upon important and relevant themes (classism, capitalism, climate change, etc). I also appreciated learning about elements of South Asian culture that were included throughout the book. I would love to have gotten more character development and explored the societal structure more in depth. Despite my low rating, I would be interested to see where the series goes and to read more of Chadha's work in the future. I wish I had enjoyed this one more!
Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for the ARC!
trigger/content warnings: brutality enacted by law enforcement, suicide, disease, pandemic, people going missing, kidnapping, child abandonment, death, starvation, mutilation/loss of limbs, death of a loved one/family members, death, mass deaths, eugenics, murder, blood, war mentions, human experimentation/testing, violence, medical procedures, bombing, stabbing