BiteIntoBooks: Review: Red Rising (Red Rising Saga #1)

Author: Pierce Brown

Started reading: August 24th 2020

Finished the book: October 1st 2020

Pages: 382

Genres: YA, Fantasy

Published: January 28th 2014

Source: Ebook

Goodreads score: 4.25

My score:

Synopsis 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.

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.

My thoughts

Thanks to Arjen for doing this buddyread with me. I needed a lot of time to get into this book. It went all over the place for me and at some point I really didn't enjoy reading the book. I was sure I was going to give it 2 stars. Then the final 30/20% happened and that was a lot of fun and made me curious about the next book.

Pros

Life: The difference between Darrows life at the beginning, middle and ending of the book was day and night and I thought it was really well done. He comes from the lowest social standard and his personal journey was interesting to me. His personal growth was also something that I enjoyed. I don't even know if I'd call it growth, maybe change is a better word. I also feel like this is a story about not losing yourself to reach your goal. I felt like Darrow would do anything.
Darrow: He is definitely my favorite character and you get to know him more and more while reading this book. I feel like he's showing different layers to his personality all the time. He is smart and ballsy and a bit arrogant at times. He's a main character I'd enjoy in any book.
Hunger Games: I got huge Hunger Games vibes from this book, but then with teams instead. The only thing that I can say about this is that I do feel like The Hunger Games was a better story/book. So I tried not to compare the books and just enjoy the feeling of reading something that reminded me of The Hunger Games
Ending: This is what swayed me on the four stars and hopefully we're going to read the next book as well. The ending was full of deaths, action, secrets and plot twists. That was well done and it makes me curious about the squeal in this series.

Cons

Too slow: The book, for the main part, felt too slow and it all took so long. Some things were, for me, really hard to understand and I found out what was going on a while later. I really would've liked a bit more of an explanation. I felt like everything felt really clear for the author, but not for readers who don't know what is the meaning of it all.

Overall

A story with a main character that I really enjoyed. Definitely among my favorite characters this year. It's a brutal book with Hunger Games vibes. I loved the ending the best, it really made me curious how the story would continue.