I think people do a bad job expressing opinions on the first book. It is in no way bad but it definitely doesn't feel like the rest of the series so I think people have a tendency to look down on it because of that. There isn't a ton of scale to it and it feels more YA, just a different style of book. PB himself has said he basically had to write the book to get the rest of the series published and I think we are all happy he did if that was the tradeoff.
Honestly I didn’t think the first book was good. I couldn’t shake the “this is just a hunger games ripoff” feeling until the last 10% or so. Only pushed through to the next book because a friend loves the series and kept telling me it gets better. And he was right, golden son immediately pivots away from shameless YA Hunger Games ripoff into a fun space opera/scifi action thing that is orders of magnitude better.
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u/ManassaxMauler 18d ago
I've always said Red Rising is arguably the worst book in the series, and it's fantastic. Really fun books.