The fifth book I consumed this year was Red Rising by Pierce brown, the first book in the Red Rising saga. This one was an audio book read because it was in the audible included library and I was looking for something to keep me entertained while I was wrapping up a project at work.
An attempt to summarise
This story is set in a dystopian world where the human race is divided into factions, defined by their colours, with red’s at the bottom of the pecking and Gold’s at the top. The different colours are literally physiologically different to one another, through hundreds of years of breeding to make them that way, which is used to justify the Gold’s superiority.
The book opens with the main character Darrow, living his life as a hell diver, in the red colony of miners. He understands his life is hard but he doesn’t really question his place in the world, he wants to do.a good job as a miner, live his life with his wife Eo and probably meet an early grave but that is his place as a red. They are pioneers, sacrificing themselves getting Mars ready for colonisation to save the human race… or so he thinks. When Eo breaks the rules in order to buy them a beautiful night under the stars and the harsh punishment is meted out by the Golden governor, Darrow finds himself facing life with her and begins questioning everything he thinks to be true. When the rebellion saves his life, they give him a mission, assimilate into the Gold’s, become one of them, rise to a position of power and conquer them.
What did I think?
This is a fantastic book and really beautiful as an audio, the way they employ the songs of Red’s is eerie and incredibly effective. This really examines how power structures like this are indoctrinated into a people, at both ends of the spectrum. As Darrow infiltrates the Gold’s he sees how they are trained to believe in their right to rule and how the colours systems ‘protects’ them. There’s plenty of heart break, mixed with the tactics of the war games Darrow has to take part in when he enters the Gold’s harsh education system. I’m actually really glad I listened to this as an audio because I think it would have been a quite dense read.
This is one I would 100% recommend if you like dystopian or sci-fi books with a lot of depth to them.
Antonia Bernardin 