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Review of Red Rising

A review of Red Rising by Pierce Brown.

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by Cheryl
Review of Red RisingRed Rising by Pierce Brown
Length: 16 hours 12 minutes
Series: Red Rising #1
Published by Random House Worlds, Recorded Books ISBN: 9780345539793
on January 28, 2014
Genres: Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Dystopian, Fiction / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure
Pages: 400
Format: Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-stars

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

Red Rising ascends above a crowded dys­topian field.”—USA Today

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—
Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness

“I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”
“I live for you,” I say sadly.
Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power.  He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

Praise for Red Rising

“[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”Entertainment Weekly

“Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler

Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”Richmond Times-Dispatch

Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga:
RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER

Red Rising is a dystopian sci-fi novel set in a world where humans — in particular the dominant “Golds” have terraformed and inhabited the solar system. Overall, I liked it — with a few caveats. Read on for my Red Rising review and more information about the book and its series.

Book Information

Review of Red RisingRed Rising by Pierce Brown
Length: 16 hours 12 minutes
Series: Red Rising #1
Published by Random House Worlds, Recorded Books ISBN: 9780345539793
on January 28, 2014
Genres: Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Dystopian, Fiction / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure
Pages: 400
Format: Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-stars

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

Red Rising ascends above a crowded dys­topian field.”—USA Today

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—
Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness

“I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”
“I live for you,” I say sadly.
Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power.  He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

Praise for Red Rising

“[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”Entertainment Weekly

“Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler

Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”Richmond Times-Dispatch

Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga:
RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER

Our Red Rising Review

Reds lead hard lives.

Low reds, the lowest of all the colors, live beneath the surface of Mars. They age early, die young, usually from occupational hazards, and have to worry about having enough food.

If they act out — which includes forbidden songs or dances — punishment — delivered by the dominant Golds is swift and harsh.

But they family and community is important to them and they go on knowing that they do a very important task — mining the substance that will allow terraforming of the surface of Mars so it will be habitable.

The problem is this: Mars has already been terraformed, the surface is habitable, and there are full cities with others living out their lives with the Golds at the top living lives of luxury. In fact, the Golds have terraformed most of the solar system.

Darrow, a young man of about 16, is a “helldiver” — one of the miners who risk their lives every day mining below Mars’ surface. A series of tragic events leads him to realize the truth and sets him on a course to fight the Golds and “The Society” — the rigid caste system that is organized according to colors.

That’s all I knew when I began the novel and I’ll try to make the rest pretty non-spoilerish except for a few things I think I need to point out.

The colors, here, are not skin colors and, at first, I sort of rolled my eyes at the idea of a caste system based on assigning colors to people. But you soon realize that there are distinct physical differences between the colors. The Golds are tall, attractive, and — gold — with stronger bones and muscles. Other colors have other physical attributes. The differences are so great that often if it comes to two different colors having a child (which doesn’t seem to happen often) their DNA may not be compatible.

How did this come about? Perhaps I missed something while listening to the audiobooks but I think it’s touched on only in a vague way so far. It’s apparent to me that the Golds changed over time. This is a society that has “carvers” which are beyond being extreme plastic surgeons, able to modify a creature’s bone and muscle structure, replace eyeballs…you get it. Based on what I read, I’m guessing that some of these changes they make are heritable and that has something to do with the “evolution” of characteristics in the colors.

But, anyway, you have yellow doctors, blue tech people, grey dragoons, pink sex slaves…the list goes on.

Overall the book is well-written and engaging — I wanted to keep listening — but there were a few places that had me rolling my eyes and thinking, “oh, another cutthroat institution that pits adolescents againt each other” 1 or “oh, another school that sorts its students into a bunch of different, competing, groups.”

This book becomes a school/academy narrative. While I generally like books like that, I think I’ve just, perhaps, read too many which is why I like the later books in the series more. 2

And, at one point, I found myself exclaiming, “What is this? Percy Jackson? Camp Jupiter?” when one of the characters referred to “The Ceres Kids.”

Because — one of the things I found interesting in this book — is that, despite the futuristic setting and the advanced technology, the Golds find inspiration from and organize their culture around ancient Rome. 3

The houses at the Institute are all centered around Roman gods, and many of the characters have distinctly Roman names (Romulus, the Julii, etc.).

For this series, I listened to the audiobook, and continued doing so as the narrator, Tim Gerard Reynolds, is excellent and perfect for this book and for the voice of the main character.

There’s also a dramatized version with a full cast — maybe I’ll check that out sometime, but I generally prefer the actual book as written.

Overall, this is a book I’d recommend, particularly if you like dystopian novels with adolescent main characters or cutthroat academy narratives, and I’m enjoying the series, so far, as a whole.

Bestsellers in the Red Rising Series

Our Red Rising Review and Rating Box with Visitor Ratings

I try to rate books in a number of different areas. Ratings, of course, are fairly subjective. Let other know what you thought about Red Rising by clicking on the “Users” tab in the review box and clicking on the icons to leave a rating of your own.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Overall
4.1

Summary

Red Rising by Pierce Brown is a Sci-fi book with a fantasy feel set in a future world in which the dominant Golds oppress the other colors. A tragic event sets the main character, Darrow, off against the Golds and their “Society.” You might like this book if you like: dystopian fiction, first-person narratives, cutthroat schools. Overall, I found this book enjoyable, engaging, and readable. And the audiobook version is a treat due to a good narrator.

Pros

  • The narrator of the audiobook version, Tim Gerard Reynolds, is excellent and has the perfect voice for this series.
  • The writing, overall, is good if you like first-person narratives. I cannot comment on punctuation and spelling as I listened to the audio of this one, but we’ll assume that it was well edited.
  • Overall, I like the world and the setup for the main character. I didn’t know much about the book when I started it, so I was a bit surprised with the direction it quickly took.

Cons

  • A few things felt sort of…familar. Adolescent pitted against each other. A cutthroat school that doesn’t shy away from killing its students. Students being sorted. But done better than some books we’ve read in this vein.
  • I sort of rolled my eyes at the color-coding system of “The Society”…until I realized that it went far beyond just assigning color levels to people.
What did you think of Red Rising? Leave your own mini Red Rising review in the comments.
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Footnotes

  1. I did hear it compared to the Hunger Games before I read. I see the parallel but I think it’s not that similar.[]
  2. So far, at the time of this writing I’m on the third book.[]
  3. Eventually in the series one of the minor characters even points the ridiculousness of this out in criticism.[]

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Audiobooks | Book Reviews | books | Dystopian novels | Fiction Books | Pierce Brown | Red Rising | reviews | Sci-fi books | Tim Gerard Reynolds

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Fantasy | First in Series | Non PNW Books | Non Travel Books | Pierce Brown | Post Apocalyptic | Red Rising | Science Fiction

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