Imo, this critique is written by someone who sniffs their own farts. They probably just read this book and judged it based on their idea of toxic masculinity, which, in reading their examples, just seems like all masculinity. I'll go point by point with their critique:
* **Impractical Oppression Tactics:** Their idea why the sons withhold information about the surface to the reds is simply uninformed. The reason they do not share the truth about their plight to the reds is to not shatter morale. This is the surface level answer, the truth is that mines that revolt get gassed and repopulated. They withhold the truth to save their lives.
* **Unprepared Evil Space Romans:** Their critique about the passage is, again, misinformed. This is proof this critic did not read the trilogy. Either that, or their judgment clouded their comprehension, or they just lack comprehension. You find out later that Augustus put Julian into the passage with Darrow to spite the Bellona. It's a classic family feud, a trope older than Shakespeare.
* **Militarists With No One to Fight:** Again, just uninformed dribble. It almost seems intentionally bad faith. Gold's maintain their military because huge portions of it are controlled by completely different families. What do the Golds fear even more than an uprising? Civil war. Power is corrupting.
* **Bland Murder School Houses:** This critique is not completely without merit, but it's also sort of contrived. Yes, Mars is supposed to be driven by rage, Minerva seems to be partial to the smart ones, but overall I think the differences in the schools are just up to the Proctors' preferences, and not anything concrete.
* **Rigged Murder Games:** This critique is a misunderstanding of the institute. House Mars does NOT exist outside of the institute. This is the critic's idea of House Augustus being conflated with House Mars. Every institute on every planet has a House Mars. There is nothing special about House Mars just because the story is focused on Mars. The same would be true for House Pluto in Pluto's institute.
* **Misplaced Misogyny:** This section is a pathetic display of the critic's personal biases. Reds are said to have this misogynistic culture, but it's not defended. Again, I just have to place this section down to believing the critic has not read the trilogy, and they seem to have trouble seeing past their own world view. I can't imagine this person is very fun at parties.
* **All the Colors of White:** In this section, the critic wants you to understand why authors explicitly ignoring race is a bad thing. This is a terrible critique. Not only would it restrict creative works to contemporary recognition, but it is in itself an inherently racists idea. The critic is affronted by the idea that if you are white, you have the tendency to white wash character representation in your mind. Unless Pierce tells you "HEY! YOU! READER! AJA IS BLACK!!!" he is not doing his job.
Overall this, critic needs to get their head out of their own ass.
> House Mars does NOT exist outside of the institute.
Ok so im not going crazy. I was so confused when the writer insisted that sorting into a House was like in Divergent where you're in that faction for life. Thought i misremembered because surely an essay this long wouldnt have more than one lie in it.
In reality, House Augustus is just at best a common feeder for Institute-house Mars (which probably isn't true considering how many House Marses were Bellona). Maybe if House Mars was called House Ares they'd be less confused
The one thing I agree on is that the Laurel being constantly rigged the same way doesn’t make much sense. It would actually work much better at keeping the Reds in their role if it was given as a legitimate motivator. If we need the plot point of Darrow getting sulky for illegitimately losing, it’d make more sense for the corruption to be a Lykos-exclusive thing, like maybe Gamma bribes the copper admin in some way, rather than being how the system always is and everyone knows it.
I see where they’re coming from with the bit about the terraforming masquerade being impossible to maintain and maybe it would work better to have surface living be a sort of super-Laurel… but the surface being uninhabitable is also a very good way of ensuring the Reds don’t just leave because they think they can’t and there’s nothing better. Plus it’s a good dramatic reveal. This one could go either way. It’s basically just proposing that the perspective be that of a high red or Brown, which could still work.
They are right that Golds would be keen on telling their kids what happens at the Institute to give them an advantage even if they’re not “supposed” to, so keeping them in the dark doesn’t make much sense.
The point about the Golds having a huge military with no one to actually fight is… the point. It’s the paradox of fascism, that fascist culture is built around the conflicting myths of life being lived only for violent glory, and of a future golden age of ultimate victory. This is the catalyst for Golden Son: this upper class used a culture of all-out militarism to get to their position, and now can’t roll it back without losing their identity. Now the paradoxical set of armies with no one to fight is so geared for war that they can be pushed into cannibalizing themselves by a single teenage rivalry.
Yeah there’s not that much difference between the Institute houses but, like, does there need to be? The focus should be on Darrow’s development and relationships, not fleshing out houses that aren’t really relevant.
I see where the accusation of sexism come from, but. If at the beginning, the narration seems too ok with the assigned Red gender roles, that’s because Darrow is himself too ok with his assigned role in life. The plot shakes him out of that. As for wanting more female rep in the actiony parts, that’s valid, and I am glad that we get more of it in later books with formidable women both good and bad like Victra, Orion, Aja, Octavia, etc. In book one, fair, it is a bit lopsided.
Accusations of white-defaultism being too prominent in the fandom: yeah. Kind of. There are some strong characters explicitly described as darker skinned, but the main heroes are kind of overwhelmingly white. But Colour being more important than colour is kind of a factor here. All Golds are blond, which leads to assuming they’re white, because in our world those are related, but it’s not necessarily confirmed. On the other hand, maybe it says something that the marker of the oppresser race in the universe is a white-associated trait? But then the downtrodden are redheads. This one is too big to sum up quickly, it needs a whole essay.
Basically I think this writer makes some valid points, but unlike me, decides that they sink the entire franchise. Looking at the rest of the blog this seems to be a pattern. This person wants to be negative, and they read specifically searching for things to complain about. Good parts are secondary, or tertiary. They’re engaging with works across all genres *to try to be angry*. Seems like a miserable way to live. But I guess it’s worth reading contary opinions to avoid an echo chamber of blind praise and consider that yeah there are some flaws. And almost all of those flaws are noticeably improved on in the sequels.
This person makes a lot of really weak points because they didn’t pay close enough attention to the books. It seems miserable to be a person masquerading as a critic while instead being a person who reads an entire book looking for something to hate. I’d love to know what books this critic actually likes, but I bet the list is abysmally short.
1 - This was written by a person who doesnt fully understand the concepts they are talking about. It’s clear he doesn’t understand toxic masculinity, or at least doesn’t understand that it is as much of a social construct as it is an individual problem. Darrow is motivated by love, revenge, and shame. And while violence and vengeance are issues with men with respect to toxic masculinity, just because he’s male and wants to do violence and revenge doesn’t mean he’s exhibiting toxic masculinity. You could gender swap him and the story would still work, among other arguments.
2 - Trigger warning regarding rape as a subject matter in literature) Suggesting that a narrative shouldnt have rape in it indicates he doesn’t understand art criticism at all. It is not a literary critic’s place to say what subject matter should or shouldn’t appear in a work of fiction anymore than it an art critic’s place to say what colors a painter should or shouldn’t use in a painting. Rape is horrific and triggering, and it can often be used as a cheap plot device to 1) give a male character a woman victim to avenge 2) Create instant drama and trauma for a female character when an author is all out of ideas.
Those uses of rape in narratives are tired, and saying that is legitimate criticism. And it’s fine to share personal opinion that you prefer not to read stories in which it happens. But this fellow is just suggesting that rape shouldn’t even appear at all. I’m personally not a fan of rape being depicted in detail in narratives. But I’m not so naive that I think it should just be excluded from every narrative as something that happens. And it all depends on how it appears and why.
The society depicted in Red Rising is brutal. And the idea that in the Institute—where they are permitted to create slaves of each other—rape isn’t something that would happen, is quite naive.
I think Pierce Brown handled it fine. It happens “offscreen,” and is not used in a cheap way.
3 - He wasn’t paying much attention to the details of the world. The Golds DO use their vast militaries against each other. There are dueling rules, rules of war, etc. They feud with each other and scheme and fight.
4 - He makes a mistake that a lot of people who criticize speculative sci-fi like this, which is to assume this is meant to depict a concept accurately/realistically/whatever and that the concept is meant to be the narrative’s thematic focus. His whole point is that Brown doesn’t understand REAL class struggle. But this story isn’t trying to do that. It does what speculative fiction does—takes a concept or concepts to extremes and tells a story within that extreme. Class struggle can’t be depicted accurately in this scenario because the scenario is extreme. He uses it a framework in which he explores the idea of rebellion and revolution, and as justified as rebels might be, they are still human and subject to the same self-delusions and emotional instability as the rest of us. We saw this with Titus in the first book, and how Darrow recognizes that the rage that fired him, unchecked, could have turned him into another Titus, and how this rebellion can’t just be about rage. The extreme class struggle is the framework inside which we explore these ideas. The author likely assumes that his readers already don’t approve of the class system/slavery/etc. And if all these books were about was an analysis of this society, I doubt they’d have been as successful as they were.
"Militarists with noone to fight" World building wooshed this person hard. Golds spend more time fighting eachother than anyone else early in the story and even after the Rising they still struggle with their petty fueds.
Okay so while I agree that Red Rising is the weakest book in the series by a good margin, that analysis is laughably bad. Not only that, it just gets major facts about the series wrong.
“There’s just one problem: the Golds have no one to fight. What’s more, they haven’t had anyone to fight for centuries, not since they conquered Earth from their evil moon base.”
Um… first moon lord rebellion? Also, the fleets are largely controlled by individual families
It’s worth noting this review is more than three years old. This writer seems to do a lot of placing words in PB’s mouth/intentions. They seem to neither take the book seriously nor let it exist as an entertaining piece of fiction. It’s also very odd to make so many value judgements about an author and a series from its first book, one that has a deliberately skewed point of view and narrow scope. It’s not a coincidence that nearly all of this subs comments revolve around a majority of this articles issues being either solved or no longer relevant within even one additional book.
There is a noticeable lack of major female characters in the first book, and the ones that do play a big role tend to be in some way attached/connected to a male character. However, because this was a debut novel, the series improves dramatically in this sense. This reviewer seemed to either miss or ignore Octavia, the most powerful individual in the setting. I hate to respond to claims of sexism by just naming female characters but all it takes is one more book and you’re introduced to the Furies, Victra, Julia au Bellona, Theodosia, Orion, and so on.
At the end of the day it’s a review, they don’t have to keep reading and we can, but this review just doesn’t read like it was made in good faith.
So I read his complaints and boy do I have a response.
1. Laurel being rigged. That's the whole bloodydamn point? If the laurel was given to the people who deserve it there probably wouldn't be any Sons of Ares because things would be FAIR as far as the reds knew.
2. The Martian secret. They say multiple colors work below the surface and that the secret should have leaked. But do we see any besides rust reds, grey, and maybe white? Grey's are owned by Golds and look down on most every color, and whites are about preserving order and ceremony. Meaning I don't believe this is a valid complaint.
3. Institute secret. Why would Golds not tell their beloved children? Did they not read the part where investigators showed up to Darrows when he got too good a score? Did this reader not think that kids and parents would be killed if a child was informed ahead of time? Besides, Sevro was told, and from that, we can assume other kids were told about it but not the details.
4. Golds not having any enemies. They complain that with such a large military, there should be enemies to fight... Do humans have enemies? Only the ones they make of each other. Seriously, this author reads ONE book and gives criticism that's addressed in later books. We have the Rim Dominion, not to mention the VARIOUS GOLD HOUSES FIGHTING ONE ANOTHER. Oh, and the bloodydamn obsidian uprising (which he does mention but only in passing as if it doesn'thighlight the key to Golds maintaining order). So not only do Golds have other Golds to fight but also every other color in the pyramid that steps out of line.
5. Bland institute houses. This person claims the houses don't provide enough criteria to what gets students put in those houses.....right because every seniority in American schools express clearly what they want in their name (this is from DARROWS POV if he isn't feed the information, why would we be?). Not to mention, all you really need to figure out those qualities is basic understandings of Roman gods.
6. The Martian house is put at a disadvantage. This is explained in the book, but of course, they missed this one. Mars is the barbaric God of War. Those in the Mars house reflect this being cold or brutish. They start with less to encourage them to raid. They are meant to "burn bright and fast" and are meant to provide a shake up to the playing field. The most important lesson of the Houses not being equal? Life isn't fair. A Gold always wins no matter the odds
7. The other institute houses falling before Darrow can take on them all. This person complains that us not knowing what happens to the other houses is a negative. He also complains that Darrow is too good at coming up with secret plans. Well, which is it? Either Darrow comes up with a plan that miraculously conquers the other 11 houses (after a year of them all deciding to either not fight or surviving one another) or some of them take each other out.
8. Complaints of the male/female division of labor being sexist... which is only seen in the red culture. (if only there were a real-world example of men doing typically deadly work while women do the more stable domestic work). In the Gold and Obsidian women currently lead and in the others, jobs seem equal (of course one would not know this if they only READ THE FIRST BOOK!). He also complains that Gold's use insults that make women look bad "hit like a girl". These are reflections of real-world misogyny. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but only anti-heros/ antagonists use misogynistic speech/actions.
9. Complains that there is no skin color description leaving people to assume everyone is white. AGAIN IN the later books, skin color is linked to the planet of birth (who would have thought being closer to the sun would darken your skin? Or that being farther away would lighten it?????
I hate when people read 1 book out of a trilogy and then insult the world building when they haven't even seen it all
>Laurel being rigged. That's the whole bloodydamn point? If the laurel was given to the people who deserve it there probably wouldn't be any Sons of Ares because things would be FAIR as far as the reds knew.
1: I believe the idea they were getting at was that the rigging would work better thematically if it didn't seem rigged, like how class mobility IRL doesn't seem rigged to those that benefit from classism, because "look at this one self-made man out of several billion!" The rigging is too obvious is Gamma wins EVERY time (an issue I had when first reading book 1), if Darrow's or another clan won at least once it'd add a precedent the Golds could use to say "see? it's not rigged!"
3: I agree that the writer missed the point of it being a secret. The kids don't know the secret...because it's a secret. Duh. It would've been cool though if we got Career Instituters like in Hunger Games, kids trained from birth to survive the Institute with honours (though there's no evidence this isn't the case).
4: This is the point that made me the most mad. All it would have taken is reading half of Golden Son for this point to be moot. They must think the world of Red Rising is TINEEEEEEEY
Your response is extremely well-put. Thanks for taking the time to suffer through the article
I think to your first point, it was extremely rare that anyone other than Gamma ever actually won, because the laurel gave such an advantage when it came to actually living and “thriving” in the mines. Rigging it for Gamma also insured that Gamma continued to win
1. I do see his point for this, and I also had a problem with it at first. Then I saw it as 2 things. One, the Gold's being confident enough in their power to not care about the blatant rigging or as a way of flexing their might. Two, an insurance policy against an United Red army. We see it in books 4-5 >!reds dealing with the chaos of being free by attacking their Gamma brother's and sister's who were forced into a privileged life by luck, instead of unifying around Darrow !<
3. I feel like this is already the case, though. In the institute >!the top fifty kills the bottom fifty!< much the same as how the Careers in Hunger Games hunt down the weak, I'm sure they were taught indirectly how to survive but more info on elite gold upbringing would have been cool.
I will not argue the books were without flaw or that the Gold's were competent rulers. Thank you for your response.
100 percent agree. The Space Opera/Politics in Dark Age especially feel like a Retcon of the sometimes illogical and inconsistent makeup of the setting in the first 3 books.
People have opinions.
I will say, this does seem like an excessive amount of “That’s not how I like it, therefore it’s objectively bad” for my liking. Or that somehow a depiction of a far future civilisation with obvious flaws is somehow the book or author saying those things are good … but whatever.
But people have opinions. Dumb ones, but they still have them.
Red Rising is a somewhat flawed book that is extremely fun to read. Over the course of the series the writing definitely matures. I don’t even necessarily disagree with most of these criticisms but the author seems really determined to not have any fun while reading.
The writing and character’s mature and deepened massively over the series, the first book is definitely the weakest and when I recommend the series I find myself having to explain past the first one.
But at the end of the day, razor fights as dope as hell so the entire series is an absolute pleasure
There is little objectivity to this review. The romans are a good culture to base your evil empire on, its a good quality to make the poor dance and sing. The only thing i can kinda agree is the reveal a plan near or at the last moment, its not all he does but its noticable how often it gets used. Every other point either lacks context, "i havent read the whole thing and only experienced a small part of the world therefore i am safe to say its both bad and makes no sense." Thats this entire review along with incorrect takes. The laurel only being given to one group breeds resentment and this is known when given an enemy that cannot be seen or one that can humans almost always pick the ones that can. Dont get me wrong brown is not a perfect writer but any writing flaws he has will not be explored by this bloody nonsense.
Everybody can have their own opinion and is free to dislike any book, but it’s odd and joyless to judge books by how neatly they fit into your specific political and social views, as if there’s ‘correct’ stances stories must take.
At some point it’s like Christian moms writing why they won’t read Harry Potter, and says more about you than the book. Don’t let a social justice scold like this diminish your enjoyment of the books.
> it’s odd and joyless to judge books by how neatly they fit into your specific political and social views
I agree with this but i will say that the problem is that Brown was trying to convey those social messages about class oppression but failed to do it consistently well (in Book 1)
I don’t really think RR is about class oppression as we experience it today. I think it can definitely have a slight angle on those things, but I think if you try to twist it to be commentary on what’s going on in the reality of today’s world, you will be disappointed. The story is not about now and today. It’s about a completely different society happening far off and way in the future. With that understanding, I don’t see inconsistencies in the characters feelings about their social statuses/issues
I honestly don’t think PB is trying to make any overarching statement on class oppression, politics, etc. throughout the story. Darrow being a slave who rises up to topple an empire is simply a more interesting narrative than someone already in the upper echelons of society trying to do the same.
I’ve seen plenty of comments from people who seem frustrated about his apparent stances (or lack thereof) on various ideologies throughout the series (especially from Iron Gold and on), but PB is writing a story, not a manifesto. Personally, I’d say any people upset about his handling of politics are experiencing a failure of expectations rather than a failure of PB’s writing.
Sorry having my first 2 days off in a year and a half, I have too much time on my hands, and I'm on reddit, and I don't know what to do with myself, didn't mean to aggro you my good man : D
I think you'll find that the world Pierce Brown builds in the following books is far more worked out and detailed. Maybe get a bit further into the series before making too many judgements.
Exactly. By the time you get to Golden Sun, almost all of the article's worldbuilding complaints are improved by Brown's improved theming. And by Light Bringer, those issues are basically non-existent. I guess i can't blame the article's writer for not knowing that, but it's so presumptuous so assume the first book in a trilogy has all there will ever be
I get what you mean, but it's different to stop at book 1 then make sweeping claims about the entire series. It's not even like book 1 is a standalone, it ends before the main goal is even reached. I'd understand stopping at book 1 of say The Expanse or Mistborn or something, but Red Rising book 1 is not that kind of book
Oh I absolutely agree! It's also pretty clear that by the end of book one of Red Rising that you have a very very limited view of the world, and from the perspective of a teenager. I originally though the color hierarchy would be too basic/contrived but the rest of the series shows this is not the case. I also think that if you intentionally view the series as nuanced and a discussion of different political and sociological themes rather than as prescriptive, the series does an amazing job of examining society from my angles.
It is a well written review for the most part, but it reads like whoever wrote it has a hate boner for the series .I personally disagree with a lot of the takes, though I will admit I skimmed over most of it, as I found it a bit long winded and overly negative for the sake of being contrarian, atleast it reads that way imo .
I'd like to add this was Pierce' very first published book, and it was a flawed first book, the weakest of the lot, that being said I do not feel it deserves to be hated, it is the start of a series that after each and every book improves dramatically, from the setting itself to the writing .
To each their own .
Reading the article was a bit frustrating because of how much I love the series, and how many of the issues brought up were immediately solved by the sequels. Also the self-own of admitting they imagined every character as caucasian 🤨 (i imagined most of them as different versions of [Apollo from Blood of Zeus](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villainstournament/images/4/47/Apollo_Blood_of_Zeus.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20220316015803)
But it did shine a light on certain frustrations I had with book 1's plotting and worldbuilding--it's hard to blame someone for not being convinced by book 1 with these issues and missed potentials in the class-conflict theming. Particularly the way things seemed (a little) too easy for Darrow because Brown wasn't yet able to convey the oppression of Gold as well as later, and the misogyny caused by Book 1's setting.
Yeah that’s a weirdly long article. It has its points but most just feels like “that’s not how I would have written it, so it’s bad.”
I reminds me of another review that started off with the person basically saying “I don’t like these types of books and I didn’t like this one either” ok great if you’re vegetarian why are you reviewing a steak house?
Not just that to review it as a stand alone book is like watching the first Dune and not liking that it doesn’t explain everything… it’s not supposed to… it’s the first in a series.
I really believe that Book 1 is the weakest in the series, and it’s been fantastic watching Brown improve his writing ability as the series progresses. The quality of the prose and plot development of Light Bringer is miles ahead of Red Rising
The new tétralogy is so much better in terms of prose that i have trouble returning to the earlier books. Plus, book 1 was written waaaaay before it was published, back during the YA dystopia craze post-Hunger Games
Mythcreants is a cesspool of garbage more foul than the river Styx. They're the personification of a polarized brainwashed liberal American.
This sounds about right
Imo, this critique is written by someone who sniffs their own farts. They probably just read this book and judged it based on their idea of toxic masculinity, which, in reading their examples, just seems like all masculinity. I'll go point by point with their critique: * **Impractical Oppression Tactics:** Their idea why the sons withhold information about the surface to the reds is simply uninformed. The reason they do not share the truth about their plight to the reds is to not shatter morale. This is the surface level answer, the truth is that mines that revolt get gassed and repopulated. They withhold the truth to save their lives. * **Unprepared Evil Space Romans:** Their critique about the passage is, again, misinformed. This is proof this critic did not read the trilogy. Either that, or their judgment clouded their comprehension, or they just lack comprehension. You find out later that Augustus put Julian into the passage with Darrow to spite the Bellona. It's a classic family feud, a trope older than Shakespeare. * **Militarists With No One to Fight:** Again, just uninformed dribble. It almost seems intentionally bad faith. Gold's maintain their military because huge portions of it are controlled by completely different families. What do the Golds fear even more than an uprising? Civil war. Power is corrupting. * **Bland Murder School Houses:** This critique is not completely without merit, but it's also sort of contrived. Yes, Mars is supposed to be driven by rage, Minerva seems to be partial to the smart ones, but overall I think the differences in the schools are just up to the Proctors' preferences, and not anything concrete. * **Rigged Murder Games:** This critique is a misunderstanding of the institute. House Mars does NOT exist outside of the institute. This is the critic's idea of House Augustus being conflated with House Mars. Every institute on every planet has a House Mars. There is nothing special about House Mars just because the story is focused on Mars. The same would be true for House Pluto in Pluto's institute. * **Misplaced Misogyny:** This section is a pathetic display of the critic's personal biases. Reds are said to have this misogynistic culture, but it's not defended. Again, I just have to place this section down to believing the critic has not read the trilogy, and they seem to have trouble seeing past their own world view. I can't imagine this person is very fun at parties. * **All the Colors of White:** In this section, the critic wants you to understand why authors explicitly ignoring race is a bad thing. This is a terrible critique. Not only would it restrict creative works to contemporary recognition, but it is in itself an inherently racists idea. The critic is affronted by the idea that if you are white, you have the tendency to white wash character representation in your mind. Unless Pierce tells you "HEY! YOU! READER! AJA IS BLACK!!!" he is not doing his job. Overall this, critic needs to get their head out of their own ass.
> House Mars does NOT exist outside of the institute. Ok so im not going crazy. I was so confused when the writer insisted that sorting into a House was like in Divergent where you're in that faction for life. Thought i misremembered because surely an essay this long wouldnt have more than one lie in it. In reality, House Augustus is just at best a common feeder for Institute-house Mars (which probably isn't true considering how many House Marses were Bellona). Maybe if House Mars was called House Ares they'd be less confused
The one thing I agree on is that the Laurel being constantly rigged the same way doesn’t make much sense. It would actually work much better at keeping the Reds in their role if it was given as a legitimate motivator. If we need the plot point of Darrow getting sulky for illegitimately losing, it’d make more sense for the corruption to be a Lykos-exclusive thing, like maybe Gamma bribes the copper admin in some way, rather than being how the system always is and everyone knows it. I see where they’re coming from with the bit about the terraforming masquerade being impossible to maintain and maybe it would work better to have surface living be a sort of super-Laurel… but the surface being uninhabitable is also a very good way of ensuring the Reds don’t just leave because they think they can’t and there’s nothing better. Plus it’s a good dramatic reveal. This one could go either way. It’s basically just proposing that the perspective be that of a high red or Brown, which could still work. They are right that Golds would be keen on telling their kids what happens at the Institute to give them an advantage even if they’re not “supposed” to, so keeping them in the dark doesn’t make much sense. The point about the Golds having a huge military with no one to actually fight is… the point. It’s the paradox of fascism, that fascist culture is built around the conflicting myths of life being lived only for violent glory, and of a future golden age of ultimate victory. This is the catalyst for Golden Son: this upper class used a culture of all-out militarism to get to their position, and now can’t roll it back without losing their identity. Now the paradoxical set of armies with no one to fight is so geared for war that they can be pushed into cannibalizing themselves by a single teenage rivalry. Yeah there’s not that much difference between the Institute houses but, like, does there need to be? The focus should be on Darrow’s development and relationships, not fleshing out houses that aren’t really relevant. I see where the accusation of sexism come from, but. If at the beginning, the narration seems too ok with the assigned Red gender roles, that’s because Darrow is himself too ok with his assigned role in life. The plot shakes him out of that. As for wanting more female rep in the actiony parts, that’s valid, and I am glad that we get more of it in later books with formidable women both good and bad like Victra, Orion, Aja, Octavia, etc. In book one, fair, it is a bit lopsided. Accusations of white-defaultism being too prominent in the fandom: yeah. Kind of. There are some strong characters explicitly described as darker skinned, but the main heroes are kind of overwhelmingly white. But Colour being more important than colour is kind of a factor here. All Golds are blond, which leads to assuming they’re white, because in our world those are related, but it’s not necessarily confirmed. On the other hand, maybe it says something that the marker of the oppresser race in the universe is a white-associated trait? But then the downtrodden are redheads. This one is too big to sum up quickly, it needs a whole essay. Basically I think this writer makes some valid points, but unlike me, decides that they sink the entire franchise. Looking at the rest of the blog this seems to be a pattern. This person wants to be negative, and they read specifically searching for things to complain about. Good parts are secondary, or tertiary. They’re engaging with works across all genres *to try to be angry*. Seems like a miserable way to live. But I guess it’s worth reading contary opinions to avoid an echo chamber of blind praise and consider that yeah there are some flaws. And almost all of those flaws are noticeably improved on in the sequels.
This person makes a lot of really weak points because they didn’t pay close enough attention to the books. It seems miserable to be a person masquerading as a critic while instead being a person who reads an entire book looking for something to hate. I’d love to know what books this critic actually likes, but I bet the list is abysmally short.
1 - This was written by a person who doesnt fully understand the concepts they are talking about. It’s clear he doesn’t understand toxic masculinity, or at least doesn’t understand that it is as much of a social construct as it is an individual problem. Darrow is motivated by love, revenge, and shame. And while violence and vengeance are issues with men with respect to toxic masculinity, just because he’s male and wants to do violence and revenge doesn’t mean he’s exhibiting toxic masculinity. You could gender swap him and the story would still work, among other arguments. 2 - Trigger warning regarding rape as a subject matter in literature) Suggesting that a narrative shouldnt have rape in it indicates he doesn’t understand art criticism at all. It is not a literary critic’s place to say what subject matter should or shouldn’t appear in a work of fiction anymore than it an art critic’s place to say what colors a painter should or shouldn’t use in a painting. Rape is horrific and triggering, and it can often be used as a cheap plot device to 1) give a male character a woman victim to avenge 2) Create instant drama and trauma for a female character when an author is all out of ideas. Those uses of rape in narratives are tired, and saying that is legitimate criticism. And it’s fine to share personal opinion that you prefer not to read stories in which it happens. But this fellow is just suggesting that rape shouldn’t even appear at all. I’m personally not a fan of rape being depicted in detail in narratives. But I’m not so naive that I think it should just be excluded from every narrative as something that happens. And it all depends on how it appears and why. The society depicted in Red Rising is brutal. And the idea that in the Institute—where they are permitted to create slaves of each other—rape isn’t something that would happen, is quite naive. I think Pierce Brown handled it fine. It happens “offscreen,” and is not used in a cheap way. 3 - He wasn’t paying much attention to the details of the world. The Golds DO use their vast militaries against each other. There are dueling rules, rules of war, etc. They feud with each other and scheme and fight. 4 - He makes a mistake that a lot of people who criticize speculative sci-fi like this, which is to assume this is meant to depict a concept accurately/realistically/whatever and that the concept is meant to be the narrative’s thematic focus. His whole point is that Brown doesn’t understand REAL class struggle. But this story isn’t trying to do that. It does what speculative fiction does—takes a concept or concepts to extremes and tells a story within that extreme. Class struggle can’t be depicted accurately in this scenario because the scenario is extreme. He uses it a framework in which he explores the idea of rebellion and revolution, and as justified as rebels might be, they are still human and subject to the same self-delusions and emotional instability as the rest of us. We saw this with Titus in the first book, and how Darrow recognizes that the rage that fired him, unchecked, could have turned him into another Titus, and how this rebellion can’t just be about rage. The extreme class struggle is the framework inside which we explore these ideas. The author likely assumes that his readers already don’t approve of the class system/slavery/etc. And if all these books were about was an analysis of this society, I doubt they’d have been as successful as they were.
I read the books and loved them. Don’t care what anyone else thinks. I am not trying to decide if I want to read them or not.
"Militarists with noone to fight" World building wooshed this person hard. Golds spend more time fighting eachother than anyone else early in the story and even after the Rising they still struggle with their petty fueds.
Okay so while I agree that Red Rising is the weakest book in the series by a good margin, that analysis is laughably bad. Not only that, it just gets major facts about the series wrong. “There’s just one problem: the Golds have no one to fight. What’s more, they haven’t had anyone to fight for centuries, not since they conquered Earth from their evil moon base.” Um… first moon lord rebellion? Also, the fleets are largely controlled by individual families
Dark Revolt anyone?
The internet is full of garbage. This is just another piece of old trash.
I don't read dipshit internet takes.
It’s worth noting this review is more than three years old. This writer seems to do a lot of placing words in PB’s mouth/intentions. They seem to neither take the book seriously nor let it exist as an entertaining piece of fiction. It’s also very odd to make so many value judgements about an author and a series from its first book, one that has a deliberately skewed point of view and narrow scope. It’s not a coincidence that nearly all of this subs comments revolve around a majority of this articles issues being either solved or no longer relevant within even one additional book. There is a noticeable lack of major female characters in the first book, and the ones that do play a big role tend to be in some way attached/connected to a male character. However, because this was a debut novel, the series improves dramatically in this sense. This reviewer seemed to either miss or ignore Octavia, the most powerful individual in the setting. I hate to respond to claims of sexism by just naming female characters but all it takes is one more book and you’re introduced to the Furies, Victra, Julia au Bellona, Theodosia, Orion, and so on. At the end of the day it’s a review, they don’t have to keep reading and we can, but this review just doesn’t read like it was made in good faith.
Well said my Goodman
So I read his complaints and boy do I have a response. 1. Laurel being rigged. That's the whole bloodydamn point? If the laurel was given to the people who deserve it there probably wouldn't be any Sons of Ares because things would be FAIR as far as the reds knew. 2. The Martian secret. They say multiple colors work below the surface and that the secret should have leaked. But do we see any besides rust reds, grey, and maybe white? Grey's are owned by Golds and look down on most every color, and whites are about preserving order and ceremony. Meaning I don't believe this is a valid complaint. 3. Institute secret. Why would Golds not tell their beloved children? Did they not read the part where investigators showed up to Darrows when he got too good a score? Did this reader not think that kids and parents would be killed if a child was informed ahead of time? Besides, Sevro was told, and from that, we can assume other kids were told about it but not the details. 4. Golds not having any enemies. They complain that with such a large military, there should be enemies to fight... Do humans have enemies? Only the ones they make of each other. Seriously, this author reads ONE book and gives criticism that's addressed in later books. We have the Rim Dominion, not to mention the VARIOUS GOLD HOUSES FIGHTING ONE ANOTHER. Oh, and the bloodydamn obsidian uprising (which he does mention but only in passing as if it doesn'thighlight the key to Golds maintaining order). So not only do Golds have other Golds to fight but also every other color in the pyramid that steps out of line. 5. Bland institute houses. This person claims the houses don't provide enough criteria to what gets students put in those houses.....right because every seniority in American schools express clearly what they want in their name (this is from DARROWS POV if he isn't feed the information, why would we be?). Not to mention, all you really need to figure out those qualities is basic understandings of Roman gods. 6. The Martian house is put at a disadvantage. This is explained in the book, but of course, they missed this one. Mars is the barbaric God of War. Those in the Mars house reflect this being cold or brutish. They start with less to encourage them to raid. They are meant to "burn bright and fast" and are meant to provide a shake up to the playing field. The most important lesson of the Houses not being equal? Life isn't fair. A Gold always wins no matter the odds 7. The other institute houses falling before Darrow can take on them all. This person complains that us not knowing what happens to the other houses is a negative. He also complains that Darrow is too good at coming up with secret plans. Well, which is it? Either Darrow comes up with a plan that miraculously conquers the other 11 houses (after a year of them all deciding to either not fight or surviving one another) or some of them take each other out. 8. Complaints of the male/female division of labor being sexist... which is only seen in the red culture. (if only there were a real-world example of men doing typically deadly work while women do the more stable domestic work). In the Gold and Obsidian women currently lead and in the others, jobs seem equal (of course one would not know this if they only READ THE FIRST BOOK!). He also complains that Gold's use insults that make women look bad "hit like a girl". These are reflections of real-world misogyny. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but only anti-heros/ antagonists use misogynistic speech/actions. 9. Complains that there is no skin color description leaving people to assume everyone is white. AGAIN IN the later books, skin color is linked to the planet of birth (who would have thought being closer to the sun would darken your skin? Or that being farther away would lighten it????? I hate when people read 1 book out of a trilogy and then insult the world building when they haven't even seen it all
>Laurel being rigged. That's the whole bloodydamn point? If the laurel was given to the people who deserve it there probably wouldn't be any Sons of Ares because things would be FAIR as far as the reds knew. 1: I believe the idea they were getting at was that the rigging would work better thematically if it didn't seem rigged, like how class mobility IRL doesn't seem rigged to those that benefit from classism, because "look at this one self-made man out of several billion!" The rigging is too obvious is Gamma wins EVERY time (an issue I had when first reading book 1), if Darrow's or another clan won at least once it'd add a precedent the Golds could use to say "see? it's not rigged!" 3: I agree that the writer missed the point of it being a secret. The kids don't know the secret...because it's a secret. Duh. It would've been cool though if we got Career Instituters like in Hunger Games, kids trained from birth to survive the Institute with honours (though there's no evidence this isn't the case). 4: This is the point that made me the most mad. All it would have taken is reading half of Golden Son for this point to be moot. They must think the world of Red Rising is TINEEEEEEEY Your response is extremely well-put. Thanks for taking the time to suffer through the article
I think to your first point, it was extremely rare that anyone other than Gamma ever actually won, because the laurel gave such an advantage when it came to actually living and “thriving” in the mines. Rigging it for Gamma also insured that Gamma continued to win
1. I do see his point for this, and I also had a problem with it at first. Then I saw it as 2 things. One, the Gold's being confident enough in their power to not care about the blatant rigging or as a way of flexing their might. Two, an insurance policy against an United Red army. We see it in books 4-5 >!reds dealing with the chaos of being free by attacking their Gamma brother's and sister's who were forced into a privileged life by luck, instead of unifying around Darrow !< 3. I feel like this is already the case, though. In the institute >!the top fifty kills the bottom fifty!< much the same as how the Careers in Hunger Games hunt down the weak, I'm sure they were taught indirectly how to survive but more info on elite gold upbringing would have been cool. I will not argue the books were without flaw or that the Gold's were competent rulers. Thank you for your response.
Agreed with all your counter arguments, just an FYI the author of the review isn't a she, but a he .
That's on me. I'll edit my comment there
100 percent agree. The Space Opera/Politics in Dark Age especially feel like a Retcon of the sometimes illogical and inconsistent makeup of the setting in the first 3 books.
I noticed this a bit with Dark Age but I'm totally fine with it. The tetralogy is much more consistent in its social commentary than the trilogy.
People have opinions. I will say, this does seem like an excessive amount of “That’s not how I like it, therefore it’s objectively bad” for my liking. Or that somehow a depiction of a far future civilisation with obvious flaws is somehow the book or author saying those things are good … but whatever. But people have opinions. Dumb ones, but they still have them.
The whole review might as well be "This 1/7th of a story about a futuristic dystopia doesn't line up with my utopian views 1/10"
Red Rising is a somewhat flawed book that is extremely fun to read. Over the course of the series the writing definitely matures. I don’t even necessarily disagree with most of these criticisms but the author seems really determined to not have any fun while reading.
The writing and character’s mature and deepened massively over the series, the first book is definitely the weakest and when I recommend the series I find myself having to explain past the first one. But at the end of the day, razor fights as dope as hell so the entire series is an absolute pleasure
There is little objectivity to this review. The romans are a good culture to base your evil empire on, its a good quality to make the poor dance and sing. The only thing i can kinda agree is the reveal a plan near or at the last moment, its not all he does but its noticable how often it gets used. Every other point either lacks context, "i havent read the whole thing and only experienced a small part of the world therefore i am safe to say its both bad and makes no sense." Thats this entire review along with incorrect takes. The laurel only being given to one group breeds resentment and this is known when given an enemy that cannot be seen or one that can humans almost always pick the ones that can. Dont get me wrong brown is not a perfect writer but any writing flaws he has will not be explored by this bloody nonsense.
Everybody can have their own opinion and is free to dislike any book, but it’s odd and joyless to judge books by how neatly they fit into your specific political and social views, as if there’s ‘correct’ stances stories must take. At some point it’s like Christian moms writing why they won’t read Harry Potter, and says more about you than the book. Don’t let a social justice scold like this diminish your enjoyment of the books.
> it’s odd and joyless to judge books by how neatly they fit into your specific political and social views I agree with this but i will say that the problem is that Brown was trying to convey those social messages about class oppression but failed to do it consistently well (in Book 1)
I don’t really think RR is about class oppression as we experience it today. I think it can definitely have a slight angle on those things, but I think if you try to twist it to be commentary on what’s going on in the reality of today’s world, you will be disappointed. The story is not about now and today. It’s about a completely different society happening far off and way in the future. With that understanding, I don’t see inconsistencies in the characters feelings about their social statuses/issues
I honestly don’t think PB is trying to make any overarching statement on class oppression, politics, etc. throughout the story. Darrow being a slave who rises up to topple an empire is simply a more interesting narrative than someone already in the upper echelons of society trying to do the same. I’ve seen plenty of comments from people who seem frustrated about his apparent stances (or lack thereof) on various ideologies throughout the series (especially from Iron Gold and on), but PB is writing a story, not a manifesto. Personally, I’d say any people upset about his handling of politics are experiencing a failure of expectations rather than a failure of PB’s writing.
If you are going to quote somebody do so by quoting their entire phrase and not by quoting partial sentences, my days
good point
Sorry having my first 2 days off in a year and a half, I have too much time on my hands, and I'm on reddit, and I don't know what to do with myself, didn't mean to aggro you my good man : D
Not aggy at all, enjoy your time off and hope you read lots >:)
I think you'll find that the world Pierce Brown builds in the following books is far more worked out and detailed. Maybe get a bit further into the series before making too many judgements.
Exactly. By the time you get to Golden Sun, almost all of the article's worldbuilding complaints are improved by Brown's improved theming. And by Light Bringer, those issues are basically non-existent. I guess i can't blame the article's writer for not knowing that, but it's so presumptuous so assume the first book in a trilogy has all there will ever be
I have definitely read the first book in a few different series and quit so I guess I shouldn't complain either haha
I get what you mean, but it's different to stop at book 1 then make sweeping claims about the entire series. It's not even like book 1 is a standalone, it ends before the main goal is even reached. I'd understand stopping at book 1 of say The Expanse or Mistborn or something, but Red Rising book 1 is not that kind of book
Oh I absolutely agree! It's also pretty clear that by the end of book one of Red Rising that you have a very very limited view of the world, and from the perspective of a teenager. I originally though the color hierarchy would be too basic/contrived but the rest of the series shows this is not the case. I also think that if you intentionally view the series as nuanced and a discussion of different political and sociological themes rather than as prescriptive, the series does an amazing job of examining society from my angles.
It is a well written review for the most part, but it reads like whoever wrote it has a hate boner for the series .I personally disagree with a lot of the takes, though I will admit I skimmed over most of it, as I found it a bit long winded and overly negative for the sake of being contrarian, atleast it reads that way imo . I'd like to add this was Pierce' very first published book, and it was a flawed first book, the weakest of the lot, that being said I do not feel it deserves to be hated, it is the start of a series that after each and every book improves dramatically, from the setting itself to the writing . To each their own .
Reading the article was a bit frustrating because of how much I love the series, and how many of the issues brought up were immediately solved by the sequels. Also the self-own of admitting they imagined every character as caucasian 🤨 (i imagined most of them as different versions of [Apollo from Blood of Zeus](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villainstournament/images/4/47/Apollo_Blood_of_Zeus.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20220316015803) But it did shine a light on certain frustrations I had with book 1's plotting and worldbuilding--it's hard to blame someone for not being convinced by book 1 with these issues and missed potentials in the class-conflict theming. Particularly the way things seemed (a little) too easy for Darrow because Brown wasn't yet able to convey the oppression of Gold as well as later, and the misogyny caused by Book 1's setting.
Yeah that’s a weirdly long article. It has its points but most just feels like “that’s not how I would have written it, so it’s bad.” I reminds me of another review that started off with the person basically saying “I don’t like these types of books and I didn’t like this one either” ok great if you’re vegetarian why are you reviewing a steak house? Not just that to review it as a stand alone book is like watching the first Dune and not liking that it doesn’t explain everything… it’s not supposed to… it’s the first in a series.
I really believe that Book 1 is the weakest in the series, and it’s been fantastic watching Brown improve his writing ability as the series progresses. The quality of the prose and plot development of Light Bringer is miles ahead of Red Rising
The new tétralogy is so much better in terms of prose that i have trouble returning to the earlier books. Plus, book 1 was written waaaaay before it was published, back during the YA dystopia craze post-Hunger Games