A review by tylerhayes
Red Rising by Pierce Brown

3.75

Starts off with a pretty cool concept, and a pretty tragic first 50 pages. Felt like a combination of hunger games and 1984. Very dystopian, very dark, some cool concepts. I liked Eo, that was pretty sad. The weird faux language they use was strange but it's very 1984-esque. I quite enjoyed the first 100 pages I would say, then it got a bit less unique. It just leaned too far into the hunger games aspect, leaving behind all the interesting dystopian details and most of the societal dynamics. I did like the ending though, pretty good payoff. And the proctors remind us of the social dynamics in this world. I liked mustang/Victoria being sibling with the antagonist but still siding with darrow. And I like the dynamic between darrow and Victoria and the guilt about Eo. Overall the book started off with a cool concept but the execution was more middle of the road.