Red Rising Trilogy by Pierce Brown
Author: Pierce Brown
Series: Red Rising Trilogy
Genre: Sci-Fi, Dystopian, Adult, Young Adult, Adventure, Thriller Fantasy
Publisher: Del Rey (Random House)
Published: 28th of January 2014
Synopsis
"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.
Review
I'll begin with stating that the trilogy about to be reviewed is quite simply an adventure from an imagination of bloodydamn epic proportions. Little did I know when starting out on this journey I'd be drawn into each twist and turn more and more, to the point of not being able to intersperse other books before reading the next in this series. Being somewhat behind from when the first in the trilogy, Red Rising, was released in mid 2014, I was lucky and incredibly thankful that I didn't have to wait anxiously for the second and then final part. I'll endeavour to avoid spoilers throughout this review but in the event they are unavoidable I shall do my best to forewarn as to hopefully preserve the feelings these books evoke, from sheer wonder at the scale of the world you'll experience right through to gut-wrenching despair and almost exhaustive weaving of characters as they fight for their own ideals of which the story is built.
I have to confess to being a bit of sucker for inter-planetary sci-fi and the universe Pierce Brown has managed to build instantly captured my imagination. The story's main protagonist, Darrow, as you will have read in the synopsis above, lives a happy-albeit-rough existence with a blissful ignorance of the well-heeled boot that keeps him and his fellow Reds firmly in the dust and uncompromising depths of Mars. To work tirelessly and with great risk everyday in order to provide a future for those less fortunate than himself is the story that was sold generations ago. This is the foundation of the caste-system known and obeyed throughout the universe. The Reds make up part of the Low-Colours along with the Pinks, Obsidians, and Browns. Mid-Colours sit above the Low and include Greens, Blues, and Yellows, amongst others. These form the dependable and (mostly) controllable pillars to allow the High Colours to sit in their Ivory Towers and live vicariously while others toil and strife. The Golds sit at the pinnacle of this callous hierarchy and, after tragedy and despair strikes, Darrow is thrust onto a course to tear down those that rule in order to realise a vision of creating a better world. I often caught myself staring obliviously into the world around me, whether it was on an idyllic beach or a quiet nook within a tea room, contemplating the fortunes of characters I felt hopelessly twinned with. However, these moments always had a touch of anxiety, as each new unveiling into the corrupt world inside these pages can be frighteningly comparable to our own.
Red Rising is a story like no other I have read and set this series up with a fast and unpredictable journey. The trial through the proving grounds for future Gold rulers, known as 'the Institute', forms the majority of this instalment and I couldn't help but liken it to a world in which Battle Royale meets Age of Empires. It is here the competition between Darrow and his newly found peers of Gold lineage fight to be the last man standing, or the 'Peerless Scarred'. The houses are of Roman mythological theme and Darrow, of House Mars, is introduced to several main characters that throughout the series evolve with the changing dynamic of the world in ways that shock, enrage, inspire, and even frighten. These characters, in my opinion, are masterfully suited to the world in which they live and are expected to one day lead. And with such a prize at stake the contest is by necessity a gritty and arduous test of one's mettle and to test how far one might go to win. A sometimes dark and sobering description of how humankind can treat one another for their own means often tingled my spine, yet it also drew me in further to try and guess the next move in the treacherous game of violent and uncompromising chess between Houses Mars, Minerva, Pluto and the others.
The contest at the Institute, harrowing as it is, foreshadows the second and third book by the depths of the characters personality that is described and their gritty nature to cling on to the world they perceive as just, or at least from their perspective. The journey taken by Darrow over the series is full of heartache where alliances are formed and lost, friends and family betrayed and used, and events similar to those found in other epic worlds. The hauntingly brutal events seen in the Red Wedding episode of A Game of Thrones is but a taste of the experiences Darrow endures and I all of a sudden feel that I'm describing a world of nothing but tortuous tragedy and bleak fortunes. This, in my humble opinion, is far from the point of the book. It is truly a tale of hope and equality but this is sought through vast levels of adversity. I felt, and still do, a very real connection to Darrow and suffered through his tribulations. However, I equally savoured the times of justice being served and happiness that also makes up the life of the idol an oppressed people need and that although having known no different have so much riding on one of their own.
Finishing this series was incredibly satisfying, although I felt it was one I could have continued indulging in for many more hours of escapism. For those who have read the series I invite any opinions of how you enjoyed the world Pierce Brown has imagined, and for those who haven't, I dare you to dive into the mines of Mars with Darrow, the deadly pitvipers, and the less honest evils in the wider world.
Review by SentFromtheFuture
@sffbookreviews
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