Red Rising Review

Bad Blurb: Darrow is a Red, the lowest members of a caste system that is ruling the galaxy. The Golds rule over everyone. Honestly, there's nothing I can say that isn't a giant spoiler for the amazing beginning.

Red Riding Review

Book by Pierce Brown

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I cannot express how much I love this book. From the prologue, I knew it was going to be good.

I felt that the exposition in the beginning felt very organic, and I felt placed amidst the action without it being difficult to tell what’s going on. I have to admit I saw EO’s death coming, but I was expecting it more towards the end of the book, and I definitely wasn’t expecting Darrow to go the noose.

I’m not often so surprised when reading as I was then, and I also want to add how beautifully the grief and hopelessness was written. I was mid-run and had to stop because I thought I was going to cry in the middle of the street. I loved how Darrow was willing to give up in the beginning because it made his resilience all the more powerful later.

I was also not expecting the plot to become about a war game for what felt like almost the whole book. I felt horror. I felt triumph. I was kicking Darrow for continuing to fall for the same trap.

I have to make a note about the narrator of the audiobook, Tim Gerard Reynolds. He was absolutely brilliant, and I credit him with a lot of what made this book so fun. His inclusion of different accents to represent different classes and how powerful he made short declarative sentences feel made the experience incredible. I cannot say if the accents were his idea alone. I thought I read that the author was inspired by the English-Irish conflicts, but the narrative performance due to this decision was amazing.

I loved how the book felt as though it had pulled from multiple genres. It is set on Mars, which lends it as Sci-Fi feel, but there are so many references to Roman gods and Roman emperors that it becomes grounded through history. It also felt rather dystopian in a Hunger Games turned Lord of the Flies kind of way, though I think comparing it to other books does it a disservice. It felt on a different level.

I will say that I was expecting one more large battle scene before everything wrapped up, and as much as I was relieved for the characters I grew to love, it felt a little bit like throwing away momentum.

I did really love the ending, specifically the last line. I also love how Brown didn’t beat the reader over the head with the double life, but kept the memory of EO alive. This book made me desperate to go on a run so that I could listen to more of it. I just downloaded the second.