Review of Pierce Brown's Red Rising 9/2/2024

Sorry for the multi day delay, I kept accidentally closing this tab and thus deleting my review, I really need to NOT do that again, but here is my review of the original trilogy (red rising, golden son, morning star).

This review will contain minor spoilers, but nothing crazy (no spoilers past the first 50 or so pages)

First a little background, the red rising series is a series of sci-fi novels following Darrow as he attempts to overthrow a societal caste system employed by the "Golds" or societies rulers. However to do this, Darrow must become a gold and infiltrate their society. 

The first book, the titular red rising, follows in Darrows life as a miner, and then his ascension into Gold hood. The book is fantastic, the writing is fast paced and things are always happening, While the book series is obviously a message about the workers rising up against the rich (aka, eat the rich, late capitalism rhetoric, hell even the french revolution, with the golds representing royality or the billionaire class) , it does a great job at humanizing the rich, while not really sympathizing with them. Even tyrants have issues, emotions, and problems, even if they are tyrants, and to an extent they are just as much a victim of the system as anyone else. Regardless, this book is really good at introducing the world of red rising, as well as establishing our set of important charecters.

The second book, golden son, takes everything about the first book and expands and improves on it, many people, including myself, think that this book is so much better written than the first that its hard to even compare. The characterization is better, the conflict is better, the worldbuilding is fleshed out. The only complaint I have is that sometimes some castes feel forgotten or oft go unmentioned, but I digress. A great book

the final book, morning star, is another awesome book. I really value how it brings the lower colors back into the fray and shows how the conflict between gold's and low colors is as detrimental to the golds as it is everyone else, but the golds are simply too prideful to make things better (despite that being a solution to keeping their own society in check) EG. pride kills the golds rule on society. I think this message works well even in real life! I feel the fall of the "rich" will be their greed and desire to keep others down, and while that lines pockets short term, it breeds hatred long term. 

Anyway, thats my spoiler free review! A fantastic trilogy, with another 4 books you can read after if you want to fill out the world even more. Thanks for reading!