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Thursday Book Review: Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Red Rising is a science fiction fantasy written about a man named Darrow hundreds of years in the future were man has colonized the planets.  Darrow is a red from mars, one of the lowliest colors of the new caste system.  He mines gas on deep within the planet and at the beginning of the novel pretty much accepts his station.  His wife Eo are fairly happy until Darrow and his wife sneak out of bounds of the city and get caught this causes Darrow and his wife to be executed publicly.

Darrow awake later to find out that he didn't die and there are people in his very community, his family even, that want to shake up the order of the caste system and begin a civil war.  They bring Darrow to a surgeon who changes the very make up of who Darrow is and how he acts.  This allows him to enter gold schools, the highest order of his society and become one of the ruling class.

Red Rising is actually part of the Red Rising Trilogy.  The second book being Golden Son and the third book being Morning Star.  Red Rising was released in 2014 with Golden Son and Morning Star being published in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Every thing I've read online about this book tells me that Mr. Brown is great at plot and character.  Of course this is people's opinion and I have to agree with them.  This book starts a little slow picks up at about the fifty page mark and rips the rest of the way.

The section of the book that finds Darrow training to be a gold is quick amazing stuff that will keep you up until three in the morning finishing it.  There is a chunk of the novel in the middle drags a bit when the book starts to tell a somewhat standard fantasy tale as the children of golds learn of wheretheir society came from in the form of ancient war games.  The book begins to pick up steam again towards the end with an amazing climax that takes place in the new Olympus as the people that Darrow has met in his training help him enact an amazing plan, and many people and places that are mentioned in passing are set up for big pay offs for the next book.

If you want a novel to read and rip through quickly, then this is the one for you.  Many things and people are introduced and set up and it seems like Mr. Brown created a lasting living breathing place with this novel.  It's not anywhere I would like to go but I think that's a testament to the way and speed with which the author writes.  I don't know if Mr. Brown was writing or just transcribing a tale that Darrow was telling him.  Either way we all win.

Red Rising is available now in bookstore and digitally.

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