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mburnamfink 's review for:
Red Rising
by Pierce Brown
Red Rising draws immediate comparisons to The Hunger Games, because the main plot is about teenagers fighting to the death, but while The Hunger Games has a theme about responsibility, Red Rising is about pure power, and I think the superior work.
Darrow is a Red, a caste of laborers who slave away under Mars mining Helium-3 so that the planet might one day be fit for civilization. He has a job he loves operating a massive fusion drill, a beautiful and idealistic wife, and a life expectancy measured in months.When his wife is executed for breaking into a upper-caste garden, and he is left for dead after burying her, he discovers that his entire life is a lie. Mars is a prosperous planet, ruled by the Golden-caste aristocrats. His people slave and die for the benefit of others. He's recruited by a terrorist organization, remade into a Golden, and given a mission: Infiltrate the Golden academy, rise through the ranks, prepare to destroy their unjust society from within.
That's the first quarter of the book. The main body is concerned with the Golden academy. The question of how to select leaders is perhaps the ultimate basis of politics, and the Goldens have a brutally Darwinian system. To join the real military rulers, their youth must attend a school that begins with a literal unarmed combat thunderdome (two men enter, one man dies), and then the surviving 50% wage a twelve-side battle starting with medieval technology; the winning general given the plummest of apprenticeships. Darrow leads a brilliant guerrilla campaign against the brutality of his own Mars house, the superior forces of rival houses, and the mendacity and corruption of the proctors. It's a fascinating action-packed adventure that takes inspiration from Machiavelli and Clausewitz and Ho Chi Minh, all set in a frozen wasteland of fierce loyalties and deadly betrayals.
The first few chapters are rough, but the book improves rapidly once it finds its feet, and is an amazing example of "working class boy" makes good. Darrow is a tense and rageful narrator, the setting an authoritarian fantasy comparable to Starship Troopers. With the games out of the way, I'm interested in seeing how the story evolves, and where Darrow's true loyalties lie.
Darrow is a Red, a caste of laborers who slave away under Mars mining Helium-3 so that the planet might one day be fit for civilization. He has a job he loves operating a massive fusion drill, a beautiful and idealistic wife, and a life expectancy measured in months.When his wife is executed for breaking into a upper-caste garden, and he is left for dead after burying her, he discovers that his entire life is a lie. Mars is a prosperous planet, ruled by the Golden-caste aristocrats. His people slave and die for the benefit of others. He's recruited by a terrorist organization, remade into a Golden, and given a mission: Infiltrate the Golden academy, rise through the ranks, prepare to destroy their unjust society from within.
That's the first quarter of the book. The main body is concerned with the Golden academy. The question of how to select leaders is perhaps the ultimate basis of politics, and the Goldens have a brutally Darwinian system. To join the real military rulers, their youth must attend a school that begins with a literal unarmed combat thunderdome (two men enter, one man dies), and then the surviving 50% wage a twelve-side battle starting with medieval technology; the winning general given the plummest of apprenticeships. Darrow leads a brilliant guerrilla campaign against the brutality of his own Mars house, the superior forces of rival houses, and the mendacity and corruption of the proctors. It's a fascinating action-packed adventure that takes inspiration from Machiavelli and Clausewitz and Ho Chi Minh, all set in a frozen wasteland of fierce loyalties and deadly betrayals.
The first few chapters are rough, but the book improves rapidly once it finds its feet, and is an amazing example of "working class boy" makes good. Darrow is a tense and rageful narrator, the setting an authoritarian fantasy comparable to Starship Troopers. With the games out of the way, I'm interested in seeing how the story evolves, and where Darrow's true loyalties lie.