[Review] Red Rising – Pierce Brown

Title: Red Rising

Author: Pierce Brown

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Series: Red Rising Trilogy #1

Publisher | Amazon | Goodreads 

The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Reds are humanity's last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all al lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.

Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda. [Hodder and Stoughton]

Writing this review is really hard for me – but on the other hand it is necessary for me just to express my weird and bad feelings for this book. 

Firstly I have to mention that I was really looking forward to reading Red Rising. It sounded like an amazing book, which I would enjoy a lot. It takes place on Mars – this fact alone made me so excited about it! And it got so many positive reviews, so it couldn't be bad, right? 

No, not right – even though I actually want to say something else but this would be a lie. 

The first couple of pages are still really good and the idea seems, while reading the book, so much more interesting. But then happens nothing – right, nothing. At least nothing exciting. Nothing unexpected. 

Everything that happened happened in other books before. The typical dystopian stuff. It seems to be a mix of The Hunger Games and some other dystopian novels with the one difference that it takes place on Mars.

But this fact doesn't matter that much, actually. At first you get to know to some interesting facts about Mars and you are introduced to a fascinating new world. But then – again – it disappeared. The rest of the book takes place in a surrounding which you can find on earth, too. A normal forest with some old castles. Seriously? On Mars? I was pretty disappointed!

And I didn't like the writing style, too. Don't get me wrong. The writing style can be amazing for someone else, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. For me it is too harsh – unnecessary harsh, I should say. To some extent it might me understandable, but in Red Rising it was just too much for me. 

And there is also – at least for me – too much violence. I don't get why a Gold should kill an other Gold! I can't say more without spoilers, but everyone who has read Red Rising hopefully knows what I mean. 

Even though there was so much fighting, violence and action I got bored. And I do not know why, because there was so much going on. Maybe it has to do something with my inability to understand the story entirely? Not only the names were a problem for me (you probably already know that I'm pretty bad in remembering names), but also the plot itself. I couldn't follow it. I was so weird and complicated and just didn't make any sense to me. And then there were some Greek gods. At least they are called like Greek gods, but they obviously aren't and I still have no idea why they are named after Greek gods. 

But there were also a few thing I liked. Firstly the characters are pretty realistic, even though they overreact sometimes but that's acceptable. Secondly the ending. It is amazing and definitely the best part of the book. And it is the reason why I want to continue on with this series although I didn't like Red Rising.

To sum it up: Red Rising disappointed me – a lot. I thought it would be an amazing novel, but no. It was boring, confusing, full of unnecessary violence and the writing style was too harsh for me. So not my type of book, even though the idea is really promising and I can definitely understand why so many readers loved Red Rising. On the other hand the ending was so good that I will continue on with this series. Just not too soon. I need some time to recover from my weird feeling for it.