A Review of Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
“Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow …Pierce Brown’s empire-crushing debut is a sprawling vision…” These are some of the glowing words used by Scott Sigler, New York Times bestselling author of Pandemic, to describe another New York Times bestseller, Red Rising, by Pierce Brown.
“A natural for Hunger Games fans” is the opinion of the Booklist reviewer.
Wow.
Maybe.
Maybe it’s just me.
I did enjoy reading this first novel of a trilogy; and a dark, dark tale set on Mars in a far future, in which humans have colonized the solar system. Darrow is a Red, the lowest caste in a color-coded society, ruled by Golds. Grays are the military, Silvers manipulate currency, Yellows, medicine, and so on. Darrow is a laborer, working to terraform Mars and make it suitable for future generations. He works so that his descendants will walk freely on surface of the planet. His existence, and all the Reds who live underground, is hardscrabble, harsh, and cruel, and life is short. This cruelty can be summed in just one example, as Darrow explains. “On Mars, there is not much gravity. So you have to pull the feet to break the neck [of someone condemned to death]. They let the loved ones do it.”
The Reds have been betrayed, and they don’t know it. The surface of Mars is habitable—and is inhabited. The Reds are slaves. Darrow and his wife, Eo, discover this when they find their way into a garden that shouldn’t be there. They are condemned to be whipped for this infraction. When Eo sings a forbidden song, she is hanged, and Darrow is the one who pulls her legs and breaks her neck. He buries his wife in this garden and he is executed, or so he thinks. Darrow wakes up to find himself among the resistance, the Sons of Ares. From them he learns just how much the Reds have been betrayed and that this betrayal has gone on for a very long time.
They want him to lead his people to freedom, but first he has to be made into a Gold. If he can pass as one of the elite, then the plan is for him to pass the tests of the Institute and not just a member of the elite, but one of the rulers—only then will he have the power to free his people. As he learns in the Institute, “All men are not created equal” (22) and he and other Golds, “are the peak of the human pyramid” (120).
Just being a Gold isn’t enough: the tests are stringent and painful and cruel. They are quickly taught to kill, to eliminate the less worthy. Then, in various teams, given castles to control, Darrow, and the others who are on his team, must fight for mastery and control, domination and power.
Can Darrow survive the fighting and the betrayals and physical brutality of this long game? As a Red, he has endured far worse. A better question is can he survive the political machinations of this long game, when it seems that the one who is meant to win is the son of the ArchGovernor?
I am not sure if this is a spoiler. After all, Red Rising is the first book in a trilogy. And the Golds ae still in power at the novel’s end. What is a probably the best question is this: Can Darrow do this and keep his soul, his true self as a Red rebel?
Why did I say Maybe in response to the stellar reviews Red Rising has received? I was reminded too much of Hunger Games and Divergent. I wanted to care more for Darrow and Eo. I wanted to see that even these pampered Gold children might have some hope for redemption, that there might be hope that they could see that their society is inherently corrupt and ultimately, evil. True, such questions are likely to be considered in the next two books. And, as Darrow is in his late teens, Red Rising is a young adult dystopia, how deep will the character development go? But, this is a novel about humans, and the wide range of possibilities of the kinds of humans there can be, from evil to good. What will the final answer in this trilogy be to what it means to be human?
“Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow …Pierce Brown’s empire-crushing debut is a sprawling vision…” These are some of the glowing words used by Scott Sigler, New York Times bestselling author of Pandemic, to describe another New York Times bestseller, Red Rising, by Pierce Brown.
“A natural for Hunger Games fans” is the opinion of the Booklist reviewer.
Wow.
Maybe.
Maybe it’s just me.
I did enjoy reading this first novel of a trilogy; and a dark, dark tale set on Mars in a far future, in which humans have colonized the solar system. Darrow is a Red, the lowest caste in a color-coded society, ruled by Golds. Grays are the military, Silvers manipulate currency, Yellows, medicine, and so on. Darrow is a laborer, working to terraform Mars and make it suitable for future generations. He works so that his descendants will walk freely on surface of the planet. His existence, and all the Reds who live underground, is hardscrabble, harsh, and cruel, and life is short. This cruelty can be summed in just one example, as Darrow explains. “On Mars, there is not much gravity. So you have to pull the feet to break the neck [of someone condemned to death]. They let the loved ones do it.”
The Reds have been betrayed, and they don’t know it. The surface of Mars is habitable—and is inhabited. The Reds are slaves. Darrow and his wife, Eo, discover this when they find their way into a garden that shouldn’t be there. They are condemned to be whipped for this infraction. When Eo sings a forbidden song, she is hanged, and Darrow is the one who pulls her legs and breaks her neck. He buries his wife in this garden and he is executed, or so he thinks. Darrow wakes up to find himself among the resistance, the Sons of Ares. From them he learns just how much the Reds have been betrayed and that this betrayal has gone on for a very long time.
They want him to lead his people to freedom, but first he has to be made into a Gold. If he can pass as one of the elite, then the plan is for him to pass the tests of the Institute and not just a member of the elite, but one of the rulers—only then will he have the power to free his people. As he learns in the Institute, “All men are not created equal” (22) and he and other Golds, “are the peak of the human pyramid” (120).
Just being a Gold isn’t enough: the tests are stringent and painful and cruel. They are quickly taught to kill, to eliminate the less worthy. Then, in various teams, given castles to control, Darrow, and the others who are on his team, must fight for mastery and control, domination and power.
Can Darrow survive the fighting and the betrayals and physical brutality of this long game? As a Red, he has endured far worse. A better question is can he survive the political machinations of this long game, when it seems that the one who is meant to win is the son of the ArchGovernor?
I am not sure if this is a spoiler. After all, Red Rising is the first book in a trilogy. And the Golds ae still in power at the novel’s end. What is a probably the best question is this: Can Darrow do this and keep his soul, his true self as a Red rebel?
Why did I say Maybe in response to the stellar reviews Red Rising has received? I was reminded too much of Hunger Games and Divergent. I wanted to care more for Darrow and Eo. I wanted to see that even these pampered Gold children might have some hope for redemption, that there might be hope that they could see that their society is inherently corrupt and ultimately, evil. True, such questions are likely to be considered in the next two books. And, as Darrow is in his late teens, Red Rising is a young adult dystopia, how deep will the character development go? But, this is a novel about humans, and the wide range of possibilities of the kinds of humans there can be, from evil to good. What will the final answer in this trilogy be to what it means to be human?
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