Red Rising by Pierce Brown // A DNF That Just Wasn't Written for Me

Red Rising (Red Rising #1), by Pierce Brown
Publication: January 28, 2014, by Del Rey
Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Science-Fiction, Dystopian
Pages: 382
Format: Hardcover
Source: Borrowed
Rating: 

Darrow is a Helldiver, one of a thousand men and women who live in the vast caves beneath the surface of Mars, generations of people who spend their lives toiling to mine the precious elements that will allow the planet to be terraformed. Just knowing that, one day, people will be able to walk the surface of the planet is enough to justify their sacrifice. The Earth is dying, and Darrow and his people are the only hope humanity has left.
Until the day Darrow learns that it is 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 at Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.
Until the day 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.
Ender's Game meets The Hunger Games in this, the first in an extraordinary trilogy from an incredible new voice.

My Thoughts:

DNF @ 100 pages

As a reviewer/blogger, am I even allowed to sit here and spend the rest of this review shrugging, and just type in "rage rage rage" fifty million times? That's not overly exaggerated, I promise. I wish I could rage and rant forever, but there are many beautiful books, far more prettier than this one, waiting for me out there. Red Rising is overly hyped for what it's worth and gives to readers, though I'm certainly thankful that I did get to share this experience and understand what another overly hyped read can do to the general public. 

I sincerely hope that you aren't getting me wrong here: I DNFed this but there are some fabulous things to take a peek on to get you to read this book. The writing is fantastic, utterly gorgeous and unlike anything I've seen in a while. Pierce Brown certainly knows where his characters and ideas are coming from, and it was all practically perfect, in that sense. His descriptions of the setting, of Mars and the heat was awesome. But then again, it was like another replay of Ender's Game, definitely. Except here we're having an issue with the maturity of Darrow, the protagonist. Dude, why are you speaking like you're in your mid-twenties? *rolls eyes*

"On Mars there is not much gravity. So you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it." (1)

Brown used a mix of things that's found from the past, in actual Earth history. Beheadings, using ropes to kill people in public after they've done something horrifying, a lot of those things are found in this imaginary world. It's compelling. And then there's the famous method that the setting's world uses to organize people by their standings and abilities. Like y'know, Gold and Red and all of those. It's super captivating... but then there's the fact that it was just too damn boring eventually. 

When I begin reading a book, I usually feel that magical feeling, some kind of emotion by page 30, at least. This book? Nada. It was like I was just reading some monotone, boring magazine about something that is totally out of my interest, which is definitely strange. Dystopia is my favourite genre, but Brown kind of took it too far for Young Adult. It wasn't that his writing was too difficult or confusing, it was just the fact that the story was complex and too much for someone's reading span. Adding to that, Darrow's perspective was too... bold. You're sixteen-eighteen, not twenty seven, y'know? I don't even remember his age because nothing about him was intriguing. He cannot be classified as the next Ender or Katniss. NO WAY. But then, I can't just forget and ignore the fact that this has a freaking 4.20 rating on Goodreads and endless amounts of 5 stars. Meh.

When reading this, it was as if I had been searching for something that I knew was impossible. I'm not trying to hate on it because maybe, if I had a different sense of patience and likings of particular standards in dystopian fiction, maybe I would've enjoyed it. Why bother reading something that doesn't seem interesting? I see no point. I could recommend this to you if you're a huge fan of those large, chunky novels filled with info-dumping and no plot development for a large period of time. Other than that, I guess you're stuck with me in the no-Red-Rising-friends-club. Please join. 

Do you like when dystopian fiction is mixed with fantasy? What other protagonists can compare to Ender and Katniss in your opinion?