Apr 272017
 

Red Rising, by Pierce Brown

Synopsis: Another crappy remake of Hunger Games.

Book Review: The worst part of Red Rising isn’t that it’s a crappy remake. The worst part is that it’s so blatantly obvious that this is a completely mercenary, soulless work meant to cash in on a fad. There is no joy or passion in this writing. You can literally see Brown just taking large chunks of good books and putting them together in typical Hollywood fashion while changing a few words. He preserves the corpses of the works he’s looting, while discarding all the soul and emotion they once held. It is a monstrosity.

It starts with a crappy remake of Braveheart for motivation, uses a crappy remake of Hunger Games for setting/plot, and runs heavily as a crappy remake of Ender’s Game (with medieval weaponry) for its action. It temporarily marred my memories of the previous works (slightly) with its grubby paws.

And due to its soullessness, it’s impossible to care about anyone in the story, or anything that’s happening.

Actually, I take back what I said at the top. The ACTUAL worst part of Red Rising is that it’s successful. It sells spectacularly, with the 3rd book in the series making it to #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list, and it is now being made into a movie. Brown’s rich now. It worked. Even though these books are the Transformers Franchise of SF Lit. As Cracked puts it “The question isn’t what’s wrong with him, the question is what is wrong with US.”

Also, I want to know who in Del Rey decided this should NOT be categorized as YA. Then I want that person to lose their job, and contract a very painful rash, and have their house catch on fire. I dislike most YA, and if it had been categorized correctly at least I would have been prepared. This is a STELLAR example of the worst of YA. It is NOTHING but YA tropes, stacked on each other, and sold to the YA audience. Look, you incredibly cynical, soulless, motherfucker at Del Rey – you and I both know that just because your YA novel has murder, rape, and cannibalism, that does NOT make it an “adult” novel (whatever the fuck that means). It is simply YA with murder, rape, and cannibalism. I hate you, don’t lie to us.

Not Recommended With Extreme Prejudice.

Book Club Review: Some people enjoyed it. I don’t judge people for enjoying something, everyone should be free to like whatever they like. Hey, I love Tinglers! I don’t read Romance, but I don’t begrudge people their Romance novels. I don’t judge Romance authors either, because they are putting out something they love, something with passion in it. All this goes for Lit Fic and YA as well. Enjoy what you enjoy, write what inspires you!

I do judge the cynical author who doesn’t have any passion for his story, or any care for his art. Much of the discussion in our group was along those lines, with some people (like myself) being offended at the brazenness of this exploit, and others saying “Eh, it was an easy read and I was entertained.” I don’t know if all groups will split this way, or if people will find other, deeper themes to discuss. But I cannot, in good conscience, inflict this “story” on anyone else. Not Recommended.

  3 Responses to “SF/F Review – Red Rising”

  1. Your review was so damning I felt compelled to read the wikipedia page on it. They plan on making a film which will be “Lawrence of Arabia in Space”

    There was nothing about the plot summary on the wiki which lead me to compare this book to Lawrence though. Having actually read the book can you see any parallels ?

  2. You can’t rip of the hunger games, the Hunger Games a rip off of Battle Royale. And a truly awful book. Red Rising is far more interesting in every way.

Leave a Reply to Darrow Cancel reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.