Red Rising - a review

I kind of made a rule for myself and this blog, and that is to review every book I give 5 stars to. Because if the book is that good, I want more people to know about it. The same would go to books that I give only 1 star. There haven't been a lot of those, but the same goes; if it's that bad, people should know why I think it is that bad. Does that make sense? I will try to review other books as well, because let's face it, there can't be too many five star books in one year, or I'd start to question my ability to rate them.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown is about a teenager called Darrow, who lives on Mars. He is of the lower class called Reds, and he thinks they are working to make Mars habitable for humans. Turns out there have been humans on Mars for a long time, and the Reds are lowest of the low in the society. After some happenings I will not spoil, Darrow finds himself with a group of rebels who help him disguise himself as a Gold, the highest class in the society. Then it just goes on from there. I don't want to write too much about the plot, and that is basically what it says in the summary anyway.

This book is brilliant. Just utterly brilliant. I loved just about everything in and about this one. The writing is just beautiful, and I kind of wanted to underline page after page of it sometimes. It's easy to read, not necessarily fast but the writing flows nicely. Everything about the world is interesting, from the history to how things are in the present. I loved how it was explained little by little, not all in a big chunk.

The characters are interesting and scary and brilliant and lovely and horrible. Even if you can't remember the names, you can recognize them by how they talk or move. Darrow is a brilliant character as well, and I kind of grew to love him by the end. The characters are human, as in they make mistakes and just try to make it in this crazy world.

The plot is interesting, surprising, and gripping. I couldn't put the book down easily, I just had to read more and more. I have mentioned earlier how I'm hard to surprise, right? Well, this book did it, and not just once. I don't remember crying during this, but I sure gasped out loud very often, and smiled or laughed when something funny happened. And I was afraid and anxious, because this is that kind of a book.

I don't know if I'd say this is a dystopian novel, but more of a fantasy or science fiction book. And even if Darrow is a teenager and the book could be a young adult novel, don't let that fool you; I think adults would enjoy this just the same. Hell, I'm 22 and loved this.

The sequel, Golden Son, came out in January, so now I'm just waiting until it gets a little cheaper and then I want it.