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