Red Rising is the first book in the Red Rising Series by Pierce Brown.
The book claims to be a “hectic ride”, and it is. Hectic. Fast. Quick. Entertaining. The pace is like a sprinter from start to finish.
And this pace is its charm and its weakness. Let me explain.
The entertaining part is that the author blows through micro-details about various places, characters, technology and other advanced specifics in this future world with such uncaring revelation that the reader is sufficed to be in the dark about a lot of things and accepts it. The author never gets bogged down by idiosyncrasies, technicalities, particulars and emotions.
The attempts, however few, the author does give to revealing something deeper and more personal about these characters and world is ineffective. As a reader, I quickly learned I wasn’t going to care about anything or anyone in this story.
The story covers a lot of ground in a brisk and unforgiving manner. And the end of the story is the quickest and most mind-numbing part. It is too simple, too quick, and hollow for my tastes. People are here and then they are there. Troops go over there and defeat those people without any idea how it happened; it just happened. Everything just falls into place with ease until a big secret looks to turn the story on its head – but then it doesn’t. And the game is over and it’s back to reality outside the game after all the death and mayhem.
Epic fantasy, for me, is like eating a five-course meal that leaves you full and satisfied, marinating on hidden meanings and deeper truths.
Red Rising is like eating a light lunch. You’re still hungry and left wanting for more in depth and emotions.
The whirlwind begins with Darrow O’Lykos, a Red Helldiver on Mars.
What do I mean by a Red? Like many of these dystopian novels nowadays, the world of Red Rising is broken up into a rigid caste system of engineered colors.
The High Colors rule the world.
The Mid Colors excel in specialities and intellectual trades.
The Low Colors slave and labor. Red is the color at the very bottom of the food chain.
Darrow is a Red miner on Mars. At 16, he is a Helldiver, one of the most dangerous jobs in the mines harvesting Helium-3 for use in terraforming the surface of the planet.
Reds like Darrow believe that the surface of Mars is still a mess and terraforming is an ongoing process that when completed, will allow everyone to be free no matter what their color is. But the Reds are being lied to and there are revolts and protests.
Darrow isn’t interested in revolting or protesting but his 14 year old wife, Eo, is. Because life is so dangerous and difficult for Reds in Red Rising, boys can wed at 16 and girls can wed at 14.
So, Darrow gets involved in a protest because of Eo, and things go horribly wrong. Right out of the gate the reader sees Darrow’s young wife hanged. And this isn’t a spoiler folks. This is right at the beginning of the book. And this hanging motivates Darrow from here on out. But of course, Darrow has to die first. Yup, you read that right. The hero is executed as well – but not really executed, not all the way dead.
The Sons of Ares, the revolutionary group that has been organizing and leading these protests against society come to Darrow’s rescue. Now that Darrow is considered dead, they modify him and make him into a Gold.
Golds are the preeminent power in this world of Red Rising.
The Sons of Ares perform a host of surgeries on Darrow and use injections and all sorts of advanced technologic devices to make Darrow taller, bigger, stronger and faster – even smarter. They train him and they teach him how to talk and act like a Gold. Darrow must unlearn all the ways and habits of being a Red. And this happens in less than a year from what I can process. Understanding time in this book is extremely difficult. Time, in fact, doesn’t seem to be relevant. Things just happen and how long it takes for the characters to do things or heal or whatever is not important to the author.
At this point, I was nearly convinced to stop reading Red Rising. I can suspend disbelief for parts of stories in fantasy but this story and this world demands the reader to suspend it from the outset. And it keeps demanding it all the way to the end.
As I was reading Red Rising, I told others that it was like watching Fast & Furious 8. You can’t apply any logic or critical thinking to it. It’s just there to entertain you and the story has little basis in reality. You have to switch off your brain completely and enjoy the roller coaster ride. Street racers battling Russians and a nuclear powered submarine? It’s just so far-fetched and over the top, you have to stop trying to make any sense of it.
Also, don’t expect to discover any depth or sentiment in Red Rising. It’s not there.
Darrow au Andromedus, resurrected and disguised now as a Gold godlike figure in less than a year’s time, infiltrates a Gold school where a hundred elites of the Gold elite are chosen – and then separated – and then paired off in private rooms – to kill one another.
Again, I wanted to stop reading this book. I am bothered by all these dystopian novels that require young people to kill one another in a kill or be killed scenario in order to survive.
Darrow survives the Passage, as they call it, by killing Julian au Bellona, the brother of Cassius au Bellona. Cassius is one of the superior Golds that many believe is destined to win this race for the top.
Because the initiates were placed in private cells for these duels, nobody knows who killed who but everyone understands that this is just the way things are – everyone that is but Cassius who is extremely upset that someone murdered his brother. Cassius swears revenge when he finds the person who did it..
The book doesn’t slow down as the students are then selected by god-like Proctors who send them to defend castles in a battle royale type landscape of rain, snow and heat. With few supplies, and a few gifts that materialize from their Proctors like a video game, all these Golds who want to be Primus of their castles, must try to organize, gather resources and survive while also looking to defend, investigate and defeat the other castles. Employing muscles and wits, the various members of the castles must find ways to decide who you will lead and who will serve. Difficult to do when they are all accustomed to leading.
Darrow is in House Mars with Cassius, of course, and even as rivals for leadership, they quickly bond and work together, developing a strange air of trust.
The book focuses a lot on the Greco-Roman world of old as these god-like Proctors overseeing the game have names all based in mythology. And like many dystopian novels, no one is supposed to kill or die but people keep killing and dying. There are flying medbots that race around the landscape trying to save lives but deaths occur routinely and some of these youngsters are maimed and injured for life. It’s not really a game, and no one trusts anyone.
As I’ve said before, when you suspend disbelief and just go at this story wherever it leads, it can be fun. No doubt. When you try to put too much thought into understanding all the who, wheres, whens and whys, you’ll get frustrated.
There’s no real graphic violence or sex scenes but people die and women are raped. People are enslaved. There is a lot of brutality and betrayal.
Darrow proves, as expected, to be formidable after one year in life as a Gold, but he does wear a lot of plot armor. He survives even when the Proctors get involved and try to knock him out of the game. The reader begins to learn that there is more at play than what the rules of the game suggest. Fairness and honesty go out the window.
Darrow, however, stays resolutely focused on his reason for being in this world of Golds, for being undercover. He must rise in rank and eventually lead a revolution against the Golds, but not because the Sons of Ares want him to do it – but because they hanged his Eo.
Darrow thinks way too often of Eo for my taste. He’s obessed with his memory of her to the point where, with all the hunger, pain, rapes and death occuring in the game world he is now in, he cannot be intimate with another woman.
Darrow knows that if he is exposed as a lowly Red, all these Golds he is allied with will kill him. He also knows that if he succeeds, he might have to kill all these Golds who have helped him rise to the top.
In the end, I say, you can turn off your brain for a while and enjoy reading this book. 3 stars.

Allen M Werner is the author of the epic dark fantasy tale The Crystal Crux Series