I went into Red Rising with high expectations, but I came out of it mostly disappointed. This story could have been so much more, but it suffers heavily from a few negatives that really hobble it.
Though this book is told from the perspective of protagonist Darrow, I feel like I hardly know him even after following him through the whole story. He comes across as rather bland and one-dimensional, with the only obvious trait of being rather full of himself. He's constantly reminding the reader how special and perfect he is and how there is no one else like him. I'm like, please.
The first two-thirds of this book is a complete slogfest. There is so much effort spent worldbuilding by throwing in tons of new words (mostly compound words with camel casing) and techs and random history, all of which don't matter to the story. My eyes glazed over. We're introduced to like 50 characters in this book, without the necessary hints of who's important and need to be remembered and who's just passing by. At some point, I gave up trying to keep straight who is who anymore.
I feel like Brown's inexperience as an author really shows in this book. He doesn't quite know how to bring some of his deeper themes into the story, so he just uses lots of flowery and overdramatic language, coming across as pretentious and completely bogging down what should have been a fast-paced book. And the plot is awkward and lumbering, though it does tighten up in the last quarter of the book and finally comes together.
Speaking of the plot itself, a lot of the ideas in here are suspiciously familiar, including being in a game arena and fighting for your life, giving slaves freedom after they've fought for you, and even some names like Severus and Minerva. I'm all for giving homage to influential books, but when it's too much that way, the story starts to feel like it's mostly borrowed and cobbled together instead of fresh and original.
For all the negatives though, I do feel the last quarter of this book grabbed my attention and brought a satisfying conclusion to the story. I'll probably go on to read the second book in the series since consensus is that it's better than the first, and I'm curious to see how the story continues.
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