Red Rising
By Pierce Brown
Darrow is a Red, the lowest in a caste system based on colors in a futuristic society. Day in and day out Darrow and his fellow Reds, who live in the earth below the surface of Mars, mine resources from the planets core to help sustain the only life they have come to know. As Darrow seeks to provide a life for his child, he soon realizes his people have been deceived for generations; there is an entire universe for the other colors already built on the surface of their planets connected to others in an interconnected and progressive society that they have been neglected from. Their mining is being used to build this Society. This leads him to seek revenge. He breaks into The Institute for Gold adolescents to be trained as warriors in the galactic battles. In order to take down the Society Darrow must become one of his enemies to bring them justice from within. A mix between The Hunger Games and A Game of Thrones, Red Rising is a new inventive saga from Pierce Brown. Soon to be made into a movie series by Universal Pictures.
“Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.”
Thoughts
Red Rising is an interesting mix of The Hunger Games and A Game of Thrones, but is played out between planets in the universe. Darrow is like Katniss in that he must compete in The Institute’s brutal games in order to rise in the draft lottery to become a feared, and respected leader in the intergalactic battles that are bound to rip the Society apart. This is a completely new world to him because all his people know are the mines below Mars’s surface. He must find allies in the most unlikely people, but as he does he becomes a leader despite his Red color. In this inventive series, Pierce Brown uses a lot of gruesome elements like half of all of the entrants into the Passage will be murdered in hand to hand combat by their fellow contestants before even entering The Institute’s main battle. This first novel focuses mainly on the rise of Darrow in The Institute’s walls. The Institute’s annual game is a lot like The Hunger Games that is used to simulate the real battle strategies of the current battles taking place in the Society. The second half of this book sticks you right into the action as Darrow must build alliances, lead, and betray his newly acquired Gold peers is honestly one of the best portions of any fantasy novel I have ever read. Truly epic.
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