Book Review - Red Rising

Red Rising

Author: Pierce Brown

Series: Red Rising Trilogy #1

Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopia | Young Adult

Release Date: 25th September 2014
Publishers: Hodder & Stoughton

No. Pages: 382

Source: Review Copy - Hodder & Stoughton

Rating: 

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The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Reds are humanity's last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.

Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.

Red Rising is a book that instantly caught my eye when it was displayed around Goodreads early this year, but i forgot to add it to my TBR to keep track of it. So when I stumbled upon the website BookBrigr, and saw that this wonderful book was available for review I just pressed request straight away. I received it the next day and tried to start it, but I wasn't in the mood. Knowing that I had to read it before the 25th of this month I decided to buckle down and just get on with it. What I didn't expect to find was me staying up in to the late hours of the night reading. It's something I very rarely do as I regret it so much the next day what with having a kid, but I didn't think about it. I was hooked.

On the front of the book there is just one quote from author Scott Sigler. it reads "Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow". That one quote is about the only thing you need to know about this book before starting it, because even though there is similarities to other popular dystopian characters or other popular dystopian books, there really isn't anyone like Darrow or the world that Pierce Brown has managed to create.

Darrow is a 16 year old Red, which makes him one of lowest of the color-coded caste. He, and the other Reds, live in a colony deep in Mars. Their job? make Mars habitable so that one day people can live on it. However what they weren't aware of is the Golds, the highest of the colour-coded castes, have been lying to them for years. Mars has already been terraformed and people have been living there for decades. 

In one day, everything Darrow thought he know, everything he ever loved or worked for is taken away from him. So what does he do? he decides to become part of a group of revolutionaries. He has nothing left to lose, so when he's told they want infiltrate the Golds by enlisting him in the Institute, a prestigious school for society's elite, he doesn't look back. Despite the danger, despite the time it take him to get to where he needs to be, despite finding himself in situations where is them or him, he does what he has to do. He made a promise to Eo, his once wife and it's the only thing that keeps him going.

I'll be honest, when this book first started I wasn't' sure it was for me, I know a lot of people had problems with it before part two and ended up putting in their DNF pile, but as someone who has been there and felt it, I can't describe how happy I was to keep going. After part one this book has so much to offer, and though it drags and time seems to move without much happening, in the end the friendships formed, the commitment and struggle that Darrow has to go through to achieve his goal is worth it.

The characters in this book is one thing I loved the most. Darrow always stayed true to himself, even though he was made to look and talk different and become something that he's grown up hating. Even though there was a hint of attraction to new characters, he always remembered and loved Eo, never once straying from that despite how long it had been since he saw them. The sub characters in this book, just wow. Sevro and Pax, two Golds that Darrows finds himself forming an bond with, there were a lot of characters I liked but those two were my favourite. 

The world building? in my opinion was faultless. There was a lot of things I didn't like about this book however, it contains some disturbing themes but they are handled right and in a way, completely necessary to the book and the development of certain characters.

In short, I loved this book and I can't wait to read the next one. Pierce Brown wrote a brilliant science fiction book that just proves that despite your age, you are never too old to enjoy a well written young adult book.