Red Rising

In the next two weeks, I will be putting up my thoughts on two of the books on my "looking forward to" list from earlier this year. Next week, I will be looking at Simon Ings' Wolves. This week, however, my focus is on my most recent read.

Red Rising, the first in a same-named series by Pierce Brown, is also the author's maiden voyage into published writing. Its cover touts its protagonist, Darrow, as the new Ender or Katniss. Its sleeve depicts it as a perfect book for Hunger Games fans. But was it all that?

The book is definitely in the genre of The Lord of the Flies (sharing living quarters with The Hunger Games and Battle Royale): a bunch of youths are placed in an artificial world devoid of overt adult interference and must compete either to be the greatest or to merely survive. It shares a little more with Suzanne Collins' work, as both Katniss and Darrow are attempting to incite rebellion against an overly-oppressive central state. In this case, Darrow is a member of the 'Reds': the lowest caste in a futuristic, solar-system-spanning society which is arranged in colours. Reds are at the bottom, 'Golds' are at the top. Ruling over these Golds are members of their own Colour: the 'Peerless Scarred' who take pride in their idea of a meritocracy, where the strongest must lead (indeed, 'Demokracy' is illegal and Brown makes a funny point in an early chapter as to its downfalls).

As I mentioned in the new year, the idea of rebellion on Mars is not a new idea. The film version of Total Recall made a particularly cheesy attempt at this, as did the video game, Red Faction. Socialism and Mars both have 'red' in common after all. In the background of this work, Brown also works in a lot of mythology from Roman history: their gods, architecture, and societal structure, as well as allusions to the Fall of Rome due to festering corruption in its core.

One of many Mars + Socialist = Red Theme stories

Red Rising is two very different books in one. The first (and thankfully shortest) sets up Darrow and his life in the mines of Mars. It shows the injustice of his life and makes him a thoroughly unlikeable character (if not as unlikeable as Asher from Karen Miller's The Innocent Mage). He lives a short life where he is married early to his sweetheart, but nearly kills himself working so as to win prestige so she doesn't have to sell her body for more food for them. Yeah, it starts pretty heavy. (The only part heavier occurs in the second part of the book, with allusions to serial rape. So this isn't exactly a children's novel.)

This first part is not great. The writing goes too fast and so misses important details. Darrow's surgical transformation from Red to Gold is breezed over. Indeed, other parts of the book breeze over details with a liquid precision too, which I would love to have seen expanded but perhaps not at the risk of turning this into an eight-hundred page tome. (Ed: Please read the addendum to this review for an update on this.)

It is when we get to the second half of the book, the actual Hunger Games component, that the real action begins. But not only action. Darrow's characterisation emerges and he actually becomes a protagonist we root for. His philosophy emerges and his drive to win. Somehow his ability to fight, despite rarely having done so before, comes out here. The writing slows down and enjoys the politics of his situation, and the plot unfolds beautifully. The original 'godly' influenced Houses for which the children all fight in quickly descend into the strategies of their particular leaders.

This part is excellent. Not only does it continue the theme of unjustness and a cancer at the heart of society, which I made mention of earlier, but the characters become human: they cry, cheat, hurt, kill. Brown throws in a number of stunning twists (and I do love effective twists) so that, as a reader, you are never fully comfortable with Darrow's position. Deceit or assassination might always be just around the corner, and even when he has power he may not keep it one moment to the next. His revelation in terms of keeping loyalty, toward the middle of the book, is an excellent turn in his own character and the direction the book takes, so that it is not just a standard Hunger Games scenario. Like Katniss, to win he breaks the rules. Even in the finishing pages of the book, I had no idea what was going to happen, or whether he was about to be betrayed.

I can only see one significant plot-hole in this work. The Peerless Scarred, by going through what they go through, must all be scarred, battered, one-eyed individuals. And yet while the book makes mention of scars on the faces of the Scarred, these seem almost ritual, not war-earned. Unless this is cleared up in the next book (hyper-advanced medicine or similar) it seems like most of the Peerless Scarred would come out with all kinds of missing appendages and psychotic traumas. But that seems a minor issue.

I admit, on reading the opening chapters of Red Rising I scoffed at the reviews which compared this to The Hunger Games. And those chapters still need a lot of work to make the character likeable and to set up his motivation in a way that we, the readers, will care for him. But in the page-turning rest of the book, I cannot fault a single word (actually, I think there was one typo).

In complexity and background it is not an adult epic fantasy like Song of Ice and Fire or The Wheel of Time. However, I can see why it is a natural progression from The Hunger Games as this is clearly an older 'young adult' novel, or for those adults who want a light read without too much detail.

This is a really good start on Brown's series, and the book concludes its own story brilliantly whilst still leaving plenty of room for its sequels. (Actually, I had no faith it would conclude at all, but it did so swiftly and unexpectedly, in ways I would never have guessed!)

The Ups: Fast-paced, well-written second half, a strong inner-voiced character and it invoked the desire in me to keep turning pages well into the night. Nail-biting, cheek-chewing treachery that always keeps you on edge.

The Downs: Slow start, skipping over important aspects of how and why, with light treatment of serious adult issues. Motivation for the protagonist is a little threadbare and a head-strong, rage-filled protagonist supposedly born without the luxuries of education, tactics and artificial muscle growths such as others have make him unlikely and at times unbelievable.

The Verdict: 3.5 haemanthus blossoms out of 5

It kept me reading once I got past the opening chapters. Indulge it that little bit and it will reward you. Pierce Brown looks to be one of those 'must watch' authors in the future. I will be eagerly anticipating this one's sequel, Golden Child.

Addendum: For some inexplicable reason, my copy of the book ended up missing three chapters (the three key chapters which depict Darrow going under Mickey's knife to transform into a Gold, and then his training and entry into the Institute, including the set-up of other important characters). I have since found those and read them. While they definitely go into more physical detail about his transformation, they also bring questions to mind about how Darrow can be so mentally skilled despite being a lowly, uneducated Red. Still, they were possibly the worst chapters to miss. I apologise to any readers of my blog who were put off by that. The flesh-sculpting of Mickey the Carver also explains how the Peerless Scarred can end up being whole again post-wargames.