Monday Book Review; Red Rising

 

Joining in at Book Journey for this week's Book Reviews!

This last week I read the book Red Rising by Pierce Brown.  I was browsing through e-books on Barnes & Noble and found this on sale.  It's the first book of a Trilogy and the description caught my attention. 

 

http://redrisingbook.com/book.php

 

"Pierce Brown's relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

"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 miner and a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he digs all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of the planet livable for future generations. Darrow has never seen the sky.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better future for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks 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 joins a resistance group in order to infiltrate the ruling class and destroy society from within. He will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so."

 

What can I say?  I LOVED IT!  If you liked The Hunger Games Trilogy, you will like this book!  What sets it apart from the Hunger games is that it is more Sci-Fi - the setting is Mars, in the distant future.  Darrow is a Red, the lowest caste of people on Mars, similar to Katniss' District 12.  The Reds are slaves to the Golds . . . as are all the other sects of people in this Hierarchy ruled government.  The thing is, the Reds don't know they are slaves.  Living underground, they have been lied to and fed false propaganda.  There is a movement beginning, a group called The Sons of Ares who wish to create an uprising against the Golds.  Darrow is chosen to be an important part of this uprising and he is told the truth about The Golds and the way the planet is run, and then sent on an undercover mission to infiltrate Gold Society.  In order to gain an influential rank inside Gold Government, Darrow must first graduate from an Institute to become a "Peerless Scarred" . . . students are thrown into the wilderness and must fight for rank with battles against other students. 

The book is intense!  It falls under the category of Dystopian Fiction, much like Ender's game, The Hunger Games, and Divergent.  As I stated above, it's more Science-Fiction genre than some of those others are, and I should mention it's not marketed as Young Adult like those other series are.  There are more adult situations, not just with violence - but including rape and murder. 

I can't wait to read the next book in the series; Golden Son! 

What's Next on my reading list?

I plan on re-reading Merrick by Anne Rice, and probably the rest of the Vampire Chronicles series after that . . . leading up to the newest installment in the series, Prince Lestat.
I'm also reading There Was An Old Woman by Hallie Ephron.