Friday Reads: ARC Review of Red Rising by Pierce Brown!!!

Hello guys!

This Friday I'm having the first review of the week for Friday Reads and it's one that I finished on Monday, and that on Tuesday was named the Goodreads Best Debut of 2014. I'm not gonna say it's not deserving because I loved it, but I really wasn't expecting it to win!

I got my ARC copy of this book when Hodder & Stoughton added it on NetGalley a pair of months back as a read it now, and I'm so very thankful for it! I cannot wait to get my hands on the sequel, that thankfully releases next month!

This one is part of both my 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge as an ARC and also part of the Dystopian Reading Challenge 2014, that I did extremely well during the first half of the year but I had been seriously slacking off as of late! Hopefully I'll reach my goal this month so I won't fail it!

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Red Rising was one of those books I was extremely intrigued about since I read about it, but I had seen some mixed reviews, some very positive, some rather negative and I was feeling a lil burned out on dystopias, so I left it in the wish list.

Then I saw it on NG as a read it now, decided to give it a try and simply devoured it in two days! I loved the set up and how the world building progressed with Darrow's character and perspective. It was a very immersive experience and one that simply kept me hooked to the book through the faster and slower parts and never lost me to wonder what the point of anything that happened would be.

This was a very gritty and ruthless world, from the mines of the Reds to the war games of the Golds. As the old adagio says, not all that glitters... And this society so structured by colours, as a new caste system, enforced with physical modifications and genetical distintions and that has the strongest influences of Roman & Greek cultures, being it most apparent in names but also in the Academy.

I don't want to talk too much about the book because for me, reading it so long after I had read the reviews worked great for me, I didn't have a very clear idea of what was going to happen, except for the basics and I really enjoyed being heartbroken, enraged and creeped out on occasion with the ruthlessness present!

The start gave me a very Braveheart like feel, even if it's set in the mines of Mars, but then the story changes mood and the stakes get higher, we get through a slower part full of fascinating classical science fiction and then we're thrown into politics, war games and simply amazing storytelling weaving it all flawlessly!

I don't usually connect too easily with male POVs, but I quite attached myself to Darrow and kept on rooting for him throught his massive rollercoaster of emotions and mental battles. He might be wrong or right, but I couldn't help but understand where he was coming from. He was a flawed character but was always trying to prove himself to the Golds, to himself and to Eo, always.

There are quite a few of unexpected turns thrown here and there that were very welcome to shake both the characters and the reader when we were getting too comfortable and I don't think I saw any of them really coming at all!

So very glad that I read this one before the year ended because I would have missed one of my favourite books of the year and a debut at that! And also very happy that I read it in December because the sequel comes out next month! There's no real evil cliffhanger here, but it does leave you wanting more!

Very much deserved 4.5 stats and very recommended for those you might think they're very much burned out on dystopians!



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