Review: Red Rising

Red Rising
Red Rising Saga #1
By Pierce Brown

“I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”

“I live for you,” I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies… even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

400 pages
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
Published on January 28, 2014
Author’s webpage

I was given a reading copy of this book by my rep way back when it was first due for release and I never read it.

Big mistake. Huge.

Thanks to Petrik over at Novel Notons I have finally picked it up and omg. I LOVED IT!

While it graphically violent at times, it strangely reads as YA-ish, which was occasionally/briefly off-putting, but not enough for me to stop reading! It was utterly captivating and I actually read this over a day-and-a-half.

I highly recommend this book and am looking forward to getting into book 2 soon.

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