Review: Red Rising

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Red Rising by Pierce Brown

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Giving Red Rising a 5-star review is likely one of the easiest things I will do today... and I plan to sit around and do not much more than take a long nap. In a sea of dystopian fiction, Red Rising has managed to stand out as something much more interesting. People are jumping quickly to compare it to The Hunger Games, Enders Game, etc. but that's such an unfair generalization of an incredible book simply because it has similar elements that are common in most dystopian fiction. Hunger Games is a kids book. Sure, I enjoyed it, but it was fluff. Red Rising is gritty and dark and adult. No, there's not much sex or profanity... but there plenty of violence. Bloody, ruthless, constant violence. And it's brilliant!

Red Rising is a combination of science fiction, dystopian fiction, and action/adventure. It was a sprinkling of all the best stuff about those genres packaged into an amazing nerdgasm!

I only really have one complaint in Red Rising: it's written in 1st-person. In general I hate this method of writing. It seems juvenile. Pierce Brown manages to make it work very very well but I still wish he would have chosen a different perspective. A minor flaw in the overall picture, I suppose.

This is arguably one of the best dystopian novels I've read. It takes all of the elements of a good story and combines them into an action-packed novel. There are very few series that I continue with but this one I will be waiting for impatiently.



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