Soar To Uncharted Heights Of Epic Dystopian Bliss With "Red Rising"

Title:  Red Rising 
(Red Rising #1)
Author:  Pierce Brown
Format:  ERC
Length:  382 pages
Publication Date:  January 28th, 2014
Publisher:  Del Rey
Rating 5 Stars

The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Reds are humanity's last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.

Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda  -Goodreads

My Thoughts

Darrow is a young man who has been lead to believe that his hard-scrabble life as a Low-Red terraformer on Mars is a necessary part of making the plant habitable for coming generations.

When a series of unfortunate circumstances lead to the loss of all he hold dear, the near loss of his life, and the decimation of his entire belief system.
Darrow is set upon a course that will if successful not only serve to change him as a man, but to also change the world.

This is a book that serves as a close up view of the tenants of the nature versus nurture debate in action.
When Darrow, a young man who has been lead to believe that his life is meant for little more than service, drudgery, and pain is than placed within the highest echelon of society with all the tools that he needs to succeed there, and told that he and he alone must fight to no only ensure, but better his position...the results are in a word GOLDEN!
Add to the afore mentioned aspects the secrecy of Darrow's true identity and personal agenda and you have a sure page turner.

The questing scenes in Red Rising have drawn comparisons to Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. However the scenes found here are far more involved and of a far greater scope than those of Miss Collins.
It is during these scenes that readers get to see Darrow develop the skills of honor, diplomacy, empathy, strategy, and the all important sense of the 'greater good' that all leaders need.

Though this is the first book in a series, it must be said that this book is a complete work, fully capable of standing on its own.
There is no doubt that Red Rising is destined for instant classic and must read status the world over.

   

About Pierce

 

 
Pierce Brown's first novel, RED RISING (Del Rey Books), debuts January 28, 2014. It is the first installment in The Red Rising Trilogy.

Pierce Brown spent his childhood building forts and setting traps for his cousins in the woods of six states and the deserts of two. Graduating college in 2010, he fancied the idea of continuing his studies at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a magical bone in his body. So while trying to make it as a writer, he worked as a manager of social media at a startup tech company, toiled as a peon on the Disney lot at ABC Studios, did his time as an NBC page, and gave sleep deprivation a new meaning during his stint as an aide on a U.S. Senate Campaign.

Now he lives in Los Angeles, where he scribbles tales of spaceships, wizards, ghouls, and most things old or bizarre.

Note to the reader: Always feel free to contact him via his website, twitter, or facebook. He likes people. Except if you're a trollish person. Then he merely puts up with you for the sake of manners and propriety.

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