I did it you guys. I finished reading my first book of the year and I’m a few chapters into my second book. I’ve decided, because I said that I was doing this reading challenge, that I would blog about it. Each book I read, I will share with you after in a book review. Please note that these are my opinions and that everyone has their own. My tastes in books and stories will be different from others. I also want to note that I am not, in any way, trying to put down the author. Now, with that being said here is my first book review on Red Rising.
What Red Rising is About
Okay, I will try to do my best at explaining the book, but without giving away spoilers. Red Rising is the first book in a trilogy, a futuristic/science fiction type of story. It was written by Pierce Brown. There are different levels of society and our main character is at the bottom of society. When the highest level of society turns his world upside down, he joins with others in a plot to take them down, from the inside. The first book covers the beginning of this plot and our main character enters the highest level of society, with help from a radical group of people. Here he finds out that not everything is as it seems with these people.
What I Liked
Well, from a writer’s point of view, I loved the descriptive writing that the author used. It was quite easy for me to picture this world and what things looked like and what people looked like. The characters were well written and some of them had great growth, where they were night and day different from when you first met them. Our main character had to grow many times over, sometimes failing, other times succeeding. I found that as the story progressed I got so caught up in the world that the characters were in that at the end, when it explained how the characters were feeling, I felt it too. Now I need to find the second book.
What I Didn’t Like
Now to talk about the negatives of Red Rising, in my opinion. Honestly, the first chunk of the book was really hard to get into. There were many times I just wanted to put the book down and never pick it up again. I had to force myself to keep reading. The second half of the book was great, but I almost did not make it because I was so bored with the beginning. I also felt like the beginning of the book was meant to feel like things were moving fast, but I felt like things were moving slow, under the guise of moving fast. In fact, the first half of the book I didn’t even like the main character.
Final Thoughts on Red Rising
Red Rising, does have a Hunger Games feel to it. If you do not like the Hunger Games, I do not recommend this book. I’ll be honest, I watched two of the movies, but never read the books. This might get me some backlash, but I hated the Hunger Games movies. So, when I reread the back and saw that it said it had the same style as the Hunger Games, I shut down any interest I had for the book, which at the time was low already. I did eventually reach a point where I started to enjoy the book and didn’t want to put it down. However, that only came about halfway through the book, maybe a bit after. I do plan to read the rest of the trilogy, as now I want to know what happens next.
