Red Rising (#1) by Pierce Brown
Published by: Del Rey (Random House) on January 28th, 2014
Genre: YA, Sci-fi, Adventure, Dystopia
Pages: 382
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased

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Synopsis: “I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”

Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”

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. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies… even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

Review: This was a great read! Most YA dystopian books take place in the mind of a teenage girl so it was very cool to read this from a male’s perspective. I hear people describe this book as a mix between The Hunger Games and Ender’s Game and I would have to agree. I also found a Greek mythology aspect as well. I was definitely glad I was able to get my hands on this book at such a great price. Kobo was having a bestsellers sale and listed this novel at 1.99 CAD. I couldn’t pass it up as I’ve been wanting to read this series for such a long time. I hope that the next two books in this series continue to impress me!

What I liked:

• As stated above I like that it was from the male’s perspective
• There’s some new lingo that takes some getting used to but it’s cool
• I feel like a lot of dystopian books are the same but this one had a cool twist to it
• I feel like since the perspective was male and the author was male there was a lot more crude language and I liked the difference
• Although there was a lot of world building I did like the explanation of everything going on
• How it was about politics and betrayal
• All the characters were pretty well developed

What I didn’t like:

• It starts off very slow. There was so much hype around this book that I was disappointed that I wasn’t getting drawn into it. As the story line picked up I couldn’t stop reading it.
• There is a lot of world building but I think that since there was so much in this first novel that the following novels won’t have as much
• Darrow didn’t seem to have any flaws. He was “perfect” which made him annoying.

I’m interested to see where the second book takes me.

Rating: 4/5 stars!