This book was released less than a month ago, but it’s already causing a stir, and it’s easy to see why. Red Rising has elements that will be familiar to anyone who’s read books like Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, or Divergent, but Pierce Brown has taken these concepts and made them into something original and epic.
Where Hunger Games has districts, and Divergent has factions, the worlds of Red Rising have Colors. You’re born to a Color and stay that way your whole life. It’s not like a caste; the different Colors have been bred to be physically different from each other.
The main character, Darrow, is a Red, one of the lowest Colors. They live beneath the surface of Mars, working in deadly mines to help terraform the surface so that the rest of humanity can one day live there.
They’re downtrodden, overworked, underfed, and apt to be hanged for the slightest offense, but they’re told that obedience is the most important trait anyone can have.
Darrow has to lose almost everything before he finds out that as bad as he thought his life was, it’s actually much much worse.
The people who show him the truth convince him to join their rebellion, and in doing so he sees other Colors: Obsidians, the hulking soldier-monsters; Pinks, prostitutes and pleasure-givers; Violets, the creatives; Yellows, the doctors; Blues, Greens, Whites, and more.
Above everyone are the Golds, who believe pleasure, wealth, and power are their birthright.
Unlike the people of the decadent Capitol in Hunger Games, though, most of the Golds are extremely dangerous. They’ve been bred to be faster and stronger than most of the other Colors, and trained to fight from a very young age. The rebellion realizes that if they’re going to defeat the Golds, they have to think like them. Darrow has to become one of them.
“Manage your temper,” he reminds me, his small voice darkening. “Manners, manners, then burn their bloodydamn house to the ground.”
Darrow ends up in the Institute, which seems like a combination of the Hunger Games Arena and the Ender’s Game Battle School, with just a little Lord of the Flies mixed in for fun. I’d assumed the book would show Darrow in the Institute for a little while, and then move on to the rest of the main story. I realized after a while that Darrow’s time in the Institute is the main story.
There are so many plots, skirmishes, and betrayals inside the Institute, if Brown was a less-skilled writer it would get confusing and boring very quickly. But he makes everything clear and constantly exciting. The pacing never got bogged down, even after a couple hundred pages of battles and changing loyalties. Every so often there would be a moment that made me want to cheer. And the interactions between all the characters were especially clever and well-written.
Brown also juggles a dozen or so important characters, but gives them such distinct personalities and descriptions, it’s easy to keep track of everyone. And all his characters are very realistic: everyone has a flaw to make them seem human, no one is too perfect or good, not even the main character. Some of the evil characters are pretty horrifically awful, but realistically so.
I’m usually skeptical about books that generate a huge amount of fuss within weeks of their release. Red Rising was worth the hype. Fans of Hunger Games and Ender’s Game will find a lot to like in this book, though Red Rising has gone in a very different direction.
I’m just glad this is the first of a trilogy: Brown has created a great new dystopian universe, and the ending of the first book leaves the reader with a lot of questions. If the next book is as good as this one, we should get some interesting answers.