It’s time for the post-vacation reviews. I read (almost) 4 books and the details are getting a bit hazy a few days after my return.
This was the first of the week and the least memorable for me.
Darrow lives on Mars as a Red, the lowest in the intergalactic caste system. He’s a young married miner, special amongst his people, but oppressed by the powers that be. A tragedy propels him out of his subterranean bubble and into the world of the upper castes, where he is chosen to be transformed into a Gold and enrolled in an elite Institute.
This first part of the book was engaging and hit a lot of the dystopian notes that I love. Then it seemed to totally derail as…wait for it…the kids in the Institute get sent out into the wild with no resources to compete in a quest for power. Hmmmm…where have we seen that before? This was the Hunger Games all over without any of the magic or brevity. The Institute/war plodded on and on at a very unnecessary length. If pared down a bit, it might have been successful for me as an “If you loved The Hunger Games…” read, but it just became drudgery.
I’m not planning to move on to the rest of the series. This seems to be a love it/hate it book with lots on the love side, so if you’re a YA dystopian fan, you might want to give it a try. I love dystopian, but don’t always love the YA versions.
2+ stars
I couldn’t get through the war games at the institute. I tried, but just could not. The first part as great, so I was disappointed.
The war games at the Institute was by far my least favorite part of all three books. But not every book is for every person, you know?
SPLUTTERGASPFAINT
What? I love this book! Yes there is a faint whiff of Hunger Games about it , but I thought everything that happened (strategy, competition, etc.) was fantastic. There’s a deep cast of excellent characters here and the tension and struggle is palpable. For what it’s worth, there is zero Hunger Games in any of the subsequent books. Sevro4EVA!
I’ll give you Sevro. He was interesting when we saw him every 40 pages ;)
If the rest of the series more closely follows the beginning of this one, I’d consider it…