Red Rising

The most recent book that I finished was Pierce Brown's Red Rising.

I gave it a shot because I heard Gino Moretto talk about one of the books in the series on Facebook. He was really positive about the book, so I looked it up. It sounded like the kind of annoying dystopia that we have been drowning in for the last fifteen years or so. The premise sounded very much like Divergent by Veronica Roth, and I hated that book. I was reading it to my kids, and I couldn't manage to get through it even for them. They all got tired of waiting for me to read the next chapter and finally just took the book and read the ending themselves. However, Gino had recommended it, so I figured I could give it a shot anyway.

Every time it got formulaic I cursed and swore. To me, it felt like a big amalgamation of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and...yes...Divergent. There's something I can't stand about goofy future worlds where everyone is categorized on arbitrary lines.  Like in Divergent where all the brave people were in one faction and all the smart people were in another, etc. As I learned about people being categorized by what they are and what they do by a bunch of goofy color codes, I groaned and groaned. 

Our hero is the lowest of the low, a red, but then he gets a bunch of surgeries so that he becomes a gold and gets to go to the school for witchcraft and wizardry...or the child genius battle school, I guess you decide what comparison is more apt. I have to admit that I screamed in annoyance when they did their own version of the sorting hat and put all the kids into houses based on their personality traits. Ugh. The school isn't really a school, but rather a place where people carry out war games, and tons and tons of people are killed even though they say you're not really supposed to kill people. 

Once you get over the general cheesiness of the premise, however, the story itself is pretty good. I liked how it twisted and turned and then eventually was taken to another, much higher level than expected, although it seriously undermined the previous bad guy. They had a weird bit at the end where they wanted you to be afraid of an imminent betrayal, but then just swept it away like it was nothing and no, the book is over. Ha ha ha, jolly good fun. That was strange and left me feeling unsatisfied.

The second biggest failing of the book, aside from the derivative feel of the whole thing, was that it was written in present tense. That got annoying pretty quick. It was like listening to some douchebag telling a story about how he beat somebody up..."So, I walk up to this dude, and say, 'You better step off, sucka,' and he gets all puffed up and says, 'What are you gonna do about it?'"...but for a whole 19 hours. Who wants to listen to that? People, I know you think it's neat and makes your book stand out if you write in present tense instead of past tense or in second person instead of first or third, but it just makes your shit annoying. Don't do it.

All in all, though, again, once you get used to the setting and stop rebelling against it, the story is not too bad. I enjoyed it in the end. I actually got to the point where I really wanted to listen to the rest of it, so that's something that I haven't felt in a while. That was nice. So, I guess I still have to recommend it. I may actually go ahead and read the next book in the series as well. So, I guess watch for that review, though it'll probably be a while.

I just checked out Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher because Rish Outfield recommended her stuff. 

So, we'll see if I can like two for two on the friend recommendations. I do hope it will appeal to me more than Red Rising, but we'll see.