It’s January. It’s cold, it’s miserable, Christmas is over and there’s nothing good to look forward to for ages. So, this month’s recommendation is very much along the theme of ‘Things could be a lot worse’.
Pierce Brown’s debut novel, Red Rising, is very much a tale of things going from bad to worse. Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the colour-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.
However, Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers a terrible secret that has been kept from him and his kind for generations. Darrow learns that he—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.
Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilisation against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies… even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.
Red Rising is a YA novel in the loosest sense of the world, as it treats its readers as wise beyond their years and deals with some mature themes. Darrow is a teenager when the novel starts out, and does a lot of growing up over the course of the novel.
The language is simple, and while the plot isn’t going to win any awards for originality, Brown does a terrific job of not only making you care for Darrow but also persistently raising the stakes, right up to a conclusion that is an absolute belter. His world-building is on point too, creating a Mars that feels objectively bleak and lived in, and very much a believable potential future.
The novel delves into politics, inequality, and classism, and takes inspiration from 1984, Brave New World, and even a pinch of Game of Thrones. Fans of The Hunger Games are going to find plenty to like in this book, as this has the feel of a much more mature version of it. Fair warning though, things do get quite brutal at times, so if you’re not one that kind of thing, maybe give this one a miss.
And the good news is that if you do enjoy Red Rising, it’s part of a long-running series to keep you going through these bitter and cold months of 2025.