Red Rising

by Pierce Brown

paperback, hardcover, ebook, audibook, 382 pages

English language

Published June 9, 2014 by Del Rey.

ISBN:: 978-0-345-53978-6

(6 reviews)

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 spends his life willingly, knowing 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 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.

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

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.

6 editions

V171 reviewed Red Rising by Pierce Brown (The Red Rising Saga, #1)

Review of 'Red Rising' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

dnf at 10%

the main character's wife gets fridged to advance his personal character development. Any story that utilizes such a tired and lazy trope has nothing interesting to offer in my opinion.

Kadomi reviewed Red Rising by Pierce Brown (The Red Rising Saga, #1)

Sort of addictive sci-fi YA with many problems

3 stars

Content warning Includes spoilers to the story

Why do I always end up with books on my reading list only to find out it's YA when I start reading? YA is just not my favorite genre these days. I dislike the tropes, I hate the 'young but perfect' protagonists, and it's usually retreading whatever's the hip YA these days. Red Rising is quite obviously following routes laid out by Battle Royale and The Hunger Games first. It adds interesting sci-fi stuff to the mix, my favorite in the novel. And yet.

Darrow is a Red miner on Mars. He's 16, very good at mining, and happily married. But the Reds are opressed by the other ruling classes of Mars, most particularly the Gold class. Reds suffer as they mine precious metals required for terraforming Mars for the inhabitants of broken Earth. Or so they think.

It's all a kind of Truman show. Outside the mining colonies, the ruling classes have already successfully terraformed Mars and are enjoying a luxurious lifestyle on the backs of the lower classes, like the Reds, or the Pinks (basically a class of prostitutes). A rebel group called Sons of Ares adopts Darrow and modifies his body, to turn him into a Gold. He is to enter their Institute, where Gold teenagers are shaped into the leaders of the future, in a sort of Capture the Flag survival game between different houses.

I was really into it in the bits where Darrow learns the truth about the lies of the Golden, but I was not so much into the Hunger Games style Battle Royale game. In fact, I found it problematic. Female contestants get raped, of course. Because why not, modern YA must include Rape Culture. It's all whiter than white, because nothing's whiter than the Gold class. There was a passage that smelled like homophobia, when two male contestants slept next to each other and were uncomfortable with it. Eh.

Would I recommend this book? Probably not. Do I want to continue reading because I want to know what's going on with Virginia (IDGAF about Darrow, honestly), absolutely.