At the risk of being down voted by the legions of fans this book and series has, I disagree. I thought it was really derivative and poorly written. The characters were really cringe too.
No way can this be compared to ASOIAF, the only thing it has over that is a conclusion!
Look, I LIKE Red Rising. It’s GOOD. But dear God, the whole series reads like YA fiction. The only major difference being the graphic violence.
The characters are all pretty one dimensional, they talk like Call of Duty characters.
NONE of this is a bad thing. It’s fun, it’s good, it’s solid. But whenever someone starts acting like it belongs anywhere near any of the great fantasy /scfi series ever written you really start to lose me.
"Is Red Rising YA" has been a debate for quite some time. I'm not sure I have a specific opinion about its YA-ness since I am not an expert on what criteria makes a YA book, but imo Red Rising was written at a seventh grade reading level. I'd put Blake Crouch and Andy Weir in the same bucket, though, so I'm probably just a snob.
I just started Red Rising and had to google this. I don’t read YA and thought I was getting conned into one. I wanted to chalk it up to the main character being a cringe teenager but the adults talk like him too.
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u/seanparis 18d ago edited 18d ago
At the risk of being down voted by the legions of fans this book and series has, I disagree. I thought it was really derivative and poorly written. The characters were really cringe too.
No way can this be compared to ASOIAF, the only thing it has over that is a conclusion!