I must shamefully admit that these days reading hasn't been exactly on top of the priority courtesy of my recent obsession, Brooklyn Nine-Nine. As of today, it's been two weeks since I first picked up Red Rising by Pierce Brown on my commute to work. Needless to say, it may look like I needed twelve days to finally sort it into the finished-reading shelve on my Goodreads while the truth is my reading activity of this book shows a huge gap in between the four times I decided to pick it up.
Red Rising follows the story of a color-coded society in the future with Red being the lowest caste and Gold the highest. As the pioneers, Darrow and the rest of the Red society believe that their hard work in the mines of Mars will pay-off once the planet is habitable to the other colors. Even though they have quite a few strict rules to follow, they believe that they're doing the best they can for humanity and their future at large.
However, everything changes when Darrow and his beautiful wife, Eo, are proved guilty for trespassing in a garden which is forbidden for them Red to go into. In the midst of confusion and despair, Darrow finds himself losing everything he has worked hard for as well as the truth about Mars. Not only it's already livable, it turns out that humanity has also reached this planet generations ago. With a longing for justice, Darrow tries to join an exclusive institute for Gold and get revenge.
As I closed the book and took a deep breath, I got to reminisce the journey this book had brought me into and all in all it felt like an insane roller coaster ride where it went up and down, up and down, up and suddenly bam, not what you expected. Some people might consider Red Rising quite similar to Hunger Games and Game of Thrones whereas for me, this book felt more like a combination of Hunger Games and Divergent with more blood and gore. I'm not usually a big fan of a too-gory book but this one certainly hit different. Aside from getting harder and harder to put down the more you dived into it, Red Rising allured me to the point where I couldn't care less about how bloody the details were.
Beginning, we got to see Darrow and his Red family in the mines of Mars and while it started out slow—interesting, but slow—it was the perfect backstory we needed to be able to find him relatable. Though I didn't agree with how the society assembled in this book, the idea of generalizing a job for each particular color was quite creative in my opinion. Besides, the plot was also arranged very neatly and therefore the premise had been very well explored.
Aside from the storyline, this book emphasized the characterization really well: it progressed significantly throughout the book and so they felt very vivid and believable. I couldn't stop admiring how realistic the politic, the rebel, the manipulation, and even the unpredictable friendship were. I did like the fact that we weren't only meant to find out the cruelty of the Gold but also the vulnerability and loyalty of some (it's in my nature to always hate the villains but some of them here made me sort of emotional instead).
Some twists could be found here and there and while it's always a good thing to be surprised by good twists like these, I still have a lot of questions hanging in the air, urging to be uncovered. Since I know should be more patient and find out the answers by myself in the next installment, I'm even more excited to dive into it now.
In conclusion, Red Rising was such an amazing first book of a series. If you're still thinking about whether you should pick it up, please don't be intimated by the size. I encourage you to at least give the first few chapters a try before deciding anything, especially if dystopian is your go-to genre in general. Last but not least, I want to thank Ipusnas for providing the e-book of this book for us to borrow—you're the one who actually convinced me to buy the physical copies of Red Rising and I couldn't be more grateful for the incredible recommendation. Now, I'm off to watch a couple episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine before going back to Mars in the sequel, Golden Son. See ya, Darrow.
Actual rating: 4.8★
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