A Review of Red Rising

“If I am a good man, why do I want to do bad things?” - Darrow

Very much in the vein of Battle Royale and Enders Game, with a perfect blending of science fiction and medieval carnage.

After reading Red Rising, I didn’t feel the need to read it again straight away because it was so visually clear in my head that I felt I could recall almost any part of it at will. It is easy to see why it was snatched up by Universal, who paid seven figures to make sure they had the rights and not Sony, with plans to put it on the big screen. It actually inspired me to start my blog and indeed the first person I followed on Twitter was Pierce Brown.

I knew I liked it and, having heard at the same time that my wife and I might be getting a great new apartment and having visions of a grand bookcase with collectable books, I went out and tracked down a first edition and thought why not and used it as the start of my collection. One became four, and I now am giving one away because I genuinely want to spread the word about this book and this author. Part of the allure of this novel is it’s the authors’ first book and you gotta love an underdog, especially one who comes out punching above his weight. Read a few articles about Pierce and you learn he is a very normal guy who likes a beer, his mates and family but who also happens to have a talent for putting words on a page that take a reader to another place. In this case, a f%^king awesome place!

Red Rising is a book of four quarters with our protagonist Darrow, resisting his drive for change, embracing his fate, questioning his decisions and then following them through with maniacal zeal as he discovers the hypocrisy of the society he has been enslaved within. As a lower class citizen essentially going undercover to bring down the system around him, we can guess at some of the challenges he will face but it is the way he deals with them that defines this character and his story as one to watch.

This particular moment, set during his training/interview had me laughing and shows his reactive nature whereby he will find and use whatever he has to, to achieve his goal.

‘After a while of watching me, he stands and punches me in the face. “If you punch me back, you will be sent home, Pixie.”

I kick him in the Shin…I don’t get sent home”

It helps that he reminds me of a young Benjamin Richards from Richard Bachmans Running Man another of my favourite books about a smart, determined but marginalised man trying to change his station.

I have read a number of reviews that had people struggling through the second quarter of the book or finding that it did not live up to the hype. With regard to the hype it is curious, as for those like myself who found the book with no hype or reviews I could not hype it up enough. That being said I can understand if you have read it is the greatest thing ever written you might feel more let down than if you had gone in with lesser expectations. As for the early pacing of the book, it’s hard to imagine the scale of the thing at this point and one could see it heading to a slow corporate takeover of the upper class but this is before we know that the upper class essentially sends their own kids into a Lord of the Flies situation. When the entire upper class forms into it’s own society we see a reshuffling to re-establish a pecking order and this results in those that have been raised for greatness byeing smacked onto their butts in the mud and told to figure it out or be a social pariah for their adult lives. I believe the first half of this book is vital in setting up the last so please if you put it down at this point, give it another try.

I’d recommend this to everyone regardless of what you normally read, and if you enjoy Science Fiction and Fantasy, it is simply a must.

ALSO I am currently running a giveawayfor this book. A signed 1st edition. Follow me on twitter at @areadingmachine and email me at Areadingmachine@gmail.com to let me know.