Red Rising, by Pierce Brown.

Main Character: Darrow.

A "professional" review stated this book was similar to, or maybe a cross between Ender's Game and The Hunger Games. My thoughts? Plot wise, there's similarities, but in world-building, character development, and crafting language, Hunger Games pales in comparison and Ender's Game can't even match.

Background Plot: society is stratified by a rank of colors, with Gold at the top. The moon has been inhabited, and worlds are being colonized. The book opens with a sixteen year old boy who is a "red" (his status, which is the lowest) working in Martian mines. Through a series of events, he comes to learn the lies of society, and then leads an interplanetary war against society, with the help of a rebellion.

What I like is his development. It is slow, methodical, but with mistakes and letdowns that make the character both believable and likable, even as he fights to not lose himself while doing unlikeable things. Even his one major PowerUp comes not in the flash of an eye and it's over, but over a period of time, and he's still vulnerable.

False Mary-Sue Alert: this story is told first person present tense. That leads Darrow to view his wife in a way that she comes across as a Mary-Sue. Don't worry, it's short-lived, and serves to help form who he is.

And then, there's the writing. Although in a couple places here and there it seems as though the author tries to hard, overall, it is a very well-written book. Here's the opening paragraph:

And the end of that prologue:

I will say, give it time. There's a decent amount of setup that has to happen before the story takes off, but once it does, I had a hard time putting it down.

---------- Post automerged at 12:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 PM ----------

DAMN IT! could a mod fix my title? It's supposed to be, "Recommendation ... surprisingly good..." Thanks.

 

I read this book a few months ago. I read it throughout the night and into the early morning refusing to go to bed until I finished. I thought it was a fun read and recommend it for any looking for an easy, but fun, book to fill their time.

 

This sounds like its good. I will check it out. Thank you.

 

The second one is even better in some ways. But damn, I wish I would have waited to read it until the third one came out. Talk about suspended suspense.

 

I've read the Ender's Game series (both) as well as the Hunger Games (at least two and a half of them) I liked most of the first, and tried as hard as I could to like the second. The biggest problem for me was worldbuilding; I thought that the Hunger Games just couldn't do it enough for what the author was asking of the readers.

I read Red Rising expecting the same thing. But it didn't.

My kindle says I'm now 82% of the way through the book I started less than a day ago. Upon one instance on my friends being upset at me not putting it down, and another when I cheered for a scene, out loud, in an empty room, I knew I needed to man up and second this book.

Seriously. I'm not even done with the first one and I'm already upset there's only two of them. Read it.

 

Laughing . . . so, which scene did you cheer out loud for?

 

I found the scene with Apollo extremely satisfying.

 

Ahh... I can see that.

 

I've been hesitant to read it because I really didn't like Hunger Games, and was worried that it would be something similar, but wow. I'm amazed. I devoured the first book in about 3-4 hours or so because the pacing just drives you forward. The best aspect that he wrote well were the side characters. They were quite fascinating, from Sevro to Tactus and so on.

I'm kinda pissed at how it ended in Golden Son though =/ What kind of cliffhanger bullshit was that?

 

Sevro's a great character. He's the same character type as the Irish dude in Braveheart. 2 parts protector, 1 part comic relief, 1 part screwed in the head.

 

I started reading it on my Kindle, got to the end, bought the next book, continued reading.

I mean, it has faults. Some reasonably glaring faults even. But I could just not put it down; the book sucked me in and would not let go.

 

Read it. Loved it. Any other recs similar to this?

 

Not that I can think of, unless you haven't read Ender's Game—especially if you appreciate quality writing. This story was different enough from anything else that it really caught my attention. Hard to rec' something else along with it.

If you're just looking for a post-apocalyptic type world, there's a bunch of them out there. One Space Military/Space opera that I've enjoyed is Terms of Enlistment. It's gritty in some places, but there's also a humorous touch here and there.

 

Nah, I've read Ender's game and all it's sister novels like Ender's Shadow etc. But I haven't read any new sci-fi novels that came out. Most of what I've read were the Golden Age Sci-fi like Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov etc. I've been on the Fantasy/Epic Fantasy reading spree lately though.

 

Finished the first book. Getting ready to start on the second. The author runs the risk of being too grim dark, but considering how he developed Mustang's story I am optimistic.