Red Rising - Pierce Brown

I quite enjoy dystopian fiction. I devoured the Hunger Games and Allegiant series and have been keeping an eye out for another series that will capture me....

...and boy did I find one! Pierce Brown has just released his debut novel - Red Rising - the first in a planned trilogy. You're going to want to get your hands on this one.

Darrow is a Red - the lowest class of a future world. His colour toils in the mines under the surface of Mars to prepare the planet for settlement by the higher colors. Gold is the highest.

" You brave Red Pioneers of Mars - strongest of the human breed - sacrifice for progress, sacrifice to pave the way for the future. Your lives, your blood, are a down payment for the immortality of the human race as we move beyond Earth and Moon. You go where we could not. You suffer so that others do not. Soon the red planet will have breathable air, livable soil. And soon, when Mars is habitable, when you brave pioneers have made ready the red planet for us softer Colors, we will join you and you will be held in highest esteem beneath the sky your toil created."

The Reds have faithfully and obediently worked for generations to achieve this mandate...until the day that Darrow discovers that they have lied. Lied for hundreds of  years. Mars is already fully settled and the Reds are nothing more than slaves.

You see it coming don't you?  Darrow is the hope of the Reds- can they pass him off as a Gold, send him to their academy and eventually infiltrate the higher ranks to bring them down?

"I am no Gold. I am a Red. He thinks men like me weak. He thinks me dumb, feeble, subhuman. I was not raised in palaces. I did not ride horses through meadows and eat meals of hummingbird tongues. I was forged in the bowels of this hard world. Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love. He is wrong. None of them will survive."

Brown has done a fantastic job with world building. He started with a great premise and as the book goes on it only gets more imaginative and descriptive. I was totally transported to the future.

All the elements are in place for a gripping, action packed, no stopping 'til you're done read...

Think it's only for teens or boys? No way! This middle aged female reader was transported to a faraway planet in a distant time where the seeds of rebellion have been sown.... Where the thirst for vengeance is played out in an arena where rules fall by the wayside.... Where the underdog is fueled by a burning need to set things right... Where honour and revenge collide.... Where friendships are dangerous, alliances are formed and broken, love blossoms and everything can change in a heartbeat....Where thinking two steps ahead of your enemy will keep you alive....

Red Rising hooked me from the very first pages and I only slowed down when I reluctantly realized I was nearing the end. Brown gives us a satisfying conclusion to this chapter of the trilogy and only whets our appetites for more with the segue into the next book. ( I will absolutely be picking it up!)
Read an excerpt of Red Rising.

"Reds at the bottom, everyone else standing on our back. Now you're looking at me and you're realizing that we don't bloodydamn like it down there. Red is rising....

"Pierce Brown spent his childhood building forts and setting traps for cousins in the woods of six states and the deserts of two. Graduating from college in 2010, he fancied the idea of continuing his studies at Hogwarts. 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 Los Angeles, where he scribbles tales of spaceships, wizards, ghouls, and most things old or bizarre." You can find Pierce Brown on Facebook and on Twitter.