Breinthewild

I read many books I would describe as  ‘good’. They interest me to the end and have decent worldbuilding and characters. However, the books that end up inspiring me, the ones that gnaw at the edges of my mind for months or even years afterwards are much harder to find. For me, Red Rising was one of the latter. Not since The Hunger Games have I hit a story so gripping and fast-paced. I picked it up hoping it would be exactly my kind of book–and it was.

The story follows 16-year-old Darrow, a miner working deep beneath the surface of Mars. He’s also a genius (a fact I didn’t get until well after the inciting incident of the book) but because of his social class (red, the lowest of the low), can never aspire to be anything more than a miner. So of course he spends the rest of the book infiltrating the highest social class (gold) on a mission to destroy the entire color-coded dystopian social system.

The color-themed social system was the hardest thing for me to get into, personally. It struck me as overly simplistic at first–a well-worn YA trope at this point, whether it be districts or houses or factions. However, much like his main character, Brown is quick to rise past this simplicity, fleshing out a world with far more nuance than the usual YA fare. (And I’m still on the fence about whether or not this is YA, despite the age of the main character. Much like Ender’s Game or The Outsiders it feels more like the marketing was applied after the fact, rather than the book being written specifically for the genre.)

One of the book’s greatest credits is its unapologetic epic tone. Lines that would feel silly or overwrought in other works land with serious punch. Likewise, the constant parallels to the Roman Empire or Greek tragedies don’t come off as stuffy or trying to ‘elevate’ basic prose – instead, they delight and defy expectations, grounding some of the more fantastical elements of the story.

In short: the pieces work (now that’s the 500 IQ book review hot take you came here for) . Even when they shouldn’t, they work. That, combined with a sharp main character who’s impossible to look away from and the breakneck pace, meant I finished it in no time and immediately went searching for the second installment.

Review beans: 9/10