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67 of 70 people found the following review helpful.
Intense, intrigue-filled, addictive read!
By Evie Seo
I've read this book last year, as soon as it popped up on Edelweiss, and honestly, it was one of the best books I've read in 2014. As I sit here today, trying to wrap my mind around its sheer awesomeness and put together a somewhat coherent review, I get ridiculously excited all over again, just thinking about the plot, the complex word-building, the insane plot twists and just how visually stunning and breathtakingly magnificent the whole story was. I really, truly loved Red Queen!I've been putting off writing my review. I didn't trust myself not go on an embarrassingly childish rave fest. And here I am, nearly half a year later, still under Red Queen's magical spell. What can you do? Some books are just THAT awesome. The one at the center of it all is Mare Barrow, an unimportant little Red. Mare lives in a world divided by blood, in which the Silver-blooded Royals hold all the power (both literally and metaphorically speaking) and the Red-bloods are nothing more than poor, lowly servants. The Silvers have supernatural powers, the Reds do not. At least that's how it's always been and what the Silvers want everyone to believe. When Mare discovers she has an ability of her own, her entire world gets flipped upside down. She finds herself thrown in the middle of intrigue-fueled Silver court, forced to play the role of a long lost Silver princess and betrothed to Silver King's song. With the Scarlet Guard becoming more and more aggressive, the full-on rebellion is fast approaching. The fate of the entire kingdom depends on the choices she'll make. And one bad decision can lead to a massacre... Red Queen is a fast paced, breathless kind of read. A true edge-of-your-seat story. Intrigue filled, action packed, twisty and highly dramatic, it's a real page turner. Impossible to put down. I really loved the world Aveyard created. It was dark and dangerous, but also oddly beautiful and enchanting. It's a world where old clashes with new. We have a Royal court with richly decorated interiors, stunning gowns, sumptuous bedrooms and deadly dungeons, but we also have modern technology, electricity and gadgets. It's a curious and completely fascinating mix that makes for a fantastic background to the intensely gripping plot line. And the plot really is phenomenal. The conflict, the intrigue, the secrets and betrayals and all the heart pounding emotions - Red Queen has it all. The writing is top shelf quality, very atmospheric and engaging. There are many twist, many painful decisions to make, some downright heartbreaking plot developments.. It's all well thought out and devised with surgical precision. The characters might seem stereotypical and one-dimensional to begin with, but as the story progresses and as we get deeper into the sticky swamp of politics, social injustice, power-struggle and multi-layered deception, we begin to see just how complex they really are. People lie and manipulate, back-stab and use others to achieve their goals. It's hard to tell who to trust, who tells the truth and who plays a dangerous game. Almost everyone wears a mask and before you know it, it's too late. I would like to tell you that absolutely everyone will love Red Queen as much as I did, but that is obviously not possible. I've read some reviews, and the opinions differ quite drastically. It's always like that with well-marketed, hyped-up books, though, so you just have to give it a try and see for yourself if this is a book for you. If you like dramatic, high-intensity, twisty reads, cliffhangers and jaw-dropping surprises, chances are you will love it. If, however, you are bothered by love triangles (even though, in my opinion, Red Queen doesn't have a typical love triangle at all), you might be iffy about it. It doesn't help that the marketing strategy here is comparing this book to YA blockbusters such as The Hunger Games or The Selection (missed comparisons in both cases), as it gives people certain expectations and invites them to draw parallels between books that have virtually nothing in common with each other. Like I said, though, it's best to give it a try and see for yourself. I really hope you'll love it just as much as I did!
101 of 117 people found the following review helpful.
Okay if you don't question it too much (like I did)
By J-J-J-Jinx
This book starts out rather derivative, with shades of Hunger Games, Red Rising and a bunch of other stuff while at first seeming like a pure fantasy genre book, based on the special powers of the Silvers, but deeper in it hints at dystopian future or parallel universe kind of stuff.There are two classes in this world. Our main character, Mare, is a red, the lower class. They have red blood and no special powers. The other, higher class, which takes great pains to suppress the reds, are the silvers. They have silver blood and they have a variety of different powers (but one each) and at one point it's mentioned that they can only draw from what is around them (like if they can channel the power of water, there actually has to be water around) although, then again, one girl with water power (or hydra power, something like that) draws water just out of the air around her. Enough water to defeat a guy with the power of fire. So, I dunno. But anyway, by accident Mare (and all the royal type silvers) finds out she has a great power herself, even though she's not supposed to since she bleeds red and all, and it gets very complicated where the king and queen (although the king is hardly a character at all in the book, very 2 dimensional) deciding it would be best if they tell everyone Mare is a long lost silver and they betroth her to their younger son. It really doesn't make sense if you think too hard about it.Reading this book I was going a bit nuts because there are a lot of inconsistencies, things that don't make sense with the world in general and characters that seem to be one way and then flip flop to become another way. I was making a mental note of them all and trying to decide which ones to present here in my review, HOWEVER, at the end of the book some of the inconsistencies are explained in a way that I shall not reveal here but let me just say it makes a bunch of people in the story look very DUMB that they have no clue about any of it. Still, it redeemed the book enough for me to elevate it to a lofty three-star rating. Oh, also I thought Mavin (who doesn't seem like much of a mavin) was a missed opportunity for a homosexual character, or maybe he secretly was, but I changed my mind about THAT at the end, too.So, some things that still don't make sense:Apparently, they have "airships", boats (although never described in any detail), a bicycle type vehicle that the reds often use, something referred vaguely to as "transport" (it's weird, whenever they are moving around toward the end of the book they are using "transport" or occasionally a "vehicle" as in "the vehicle arrived" or "we took the transport back to the _____" and never is this mysterious transport described in any way. C'mon, that's weird when you think about it! Meanwhile, apparently they have all of these vehicles and various means of transport but Cal invents...the motorcycle! People think he's crazy and it seems dangerous, but he's determined it will be a good idea.Also, the war, which I think has gone on for 500 years or something like that, like since around the time of King Ceasar (really? King Ceasar? There is also a guy named Samson who fights a huge, strong guy towards the beginning...I thought maybe it was the beginning of a bunch of tongue in cheek humor but...no.) So the war is fought all on the ground with reds being the ones doing most of the fighting, despite the fact that they have silvers with superpowers basically and plus they have airships and really quite a lot of technology including surveillance cameras, tv/video screens, force fields, all kinds of stuff. They have doors and jail cells that seem to be openable only by someone with the right ability to bend the metal or manipulate it in the correct way. That must suck if you want to put someone with that power into that jail or maybe you want to get someone out and can't find the correct metal-bending jailer. But um, back to the war...the whole thing sounds crazy but maybe if you end up reading the next book in this trilogy you can let me know if the whole war thing is just a big fake to keep everyone busy or something, okay?Another thing, Mare (neigh! neigh! whinny!) is having trouble controlling her new-found powers with her regular history teacher, so they put her in with the rest of the teens who have already been training their powers for years, to help her learn control. Their training seems to consist of running around obstacles a lot and then fighting each other. I'm not sure how she learns control from that, but I guess it works. For some reason, two people with the same power never fight each other. Also, Mare seems amazed to watch some of these powers like she hasn't seen them at the mandatory show battles they are forced to attend on First Fridays. I don't even really know why this group is assembled to train together. I guess it's all the teens that ended up forced to hang out at the seasonal palace? Also, except for twin four year old boys and I think perhaps one mention of a baby (or was it a toddler?) there isn't anyone below teenage in the whole book. There is also no-one in their 20s, it seems like. It kind of skips right to parent-of-teenager age and then much older right away.Also, why are people relieved to find out a woman had her tongue cut out so she can't spill their secrets? She seems to be well educated and this world does have pen and paper so....Why wouldn't Mare ask to have her father healed as part of her "deal" with the king and queen?How could anyone believe Mare was a silver raised by reds? Apparently, when Mare is dressed in the mornings, she has to have thick makeup put on her to hide the fact that she has pink undertones and blushes red...silvers blush silver and bleed silver as well. Surely she couldn't reach age 17 without herself or anyone else realizing "hey, this one is actually a silver!" But if they did believe that could happen, I guess they could also believe that the moment she is "discovered" to be the daughter of a war hero silver she instantly took on every attitude of a silver and completely turned her back on the reds and started sneering at them.Really, I have a lot of other questions, about population and interbreeding (or not) and Mare's father and the location of the grey town, the feasibility of stealing and also selling of stolen goods in a small village and stealing electricity ration slips and how did a small village, in the mud, on stilts, get this fancy paper slip method of getting electricity and do people have phones? I mean, it seems like they must only no-one uses them in the story. Maybe they are waiting for Cal to invent them.I've probably gone on too long here, but I wanted to mention something about the silvers: they are the ruling class and they have these crazy powers like controlling fire or water or being able to read your mind or make a whole forest grow in the blink of an eye or they have superhuman strength, and yet they seem extremely undisciplined and often act like children. At the slightest provocation they will start stompling reds and they love to fight each other as well. It seems to me like they should have a culture of control and moderation, otherwise they would have descended into complete anarchy and reduced their cities to rubble a long time ago. This may be yet another thing that will be explained in another book, but it certainly makes no sense in this one.I dunno, if I keep thinking about all the questions I have, I'm going to have to take away that third star I gave it. There is also an assassination attempt that has to be the dumbest attempts ever. Some mention is made of cutting off the head to kill the whole snake but ummm...they could have killed ANYONE they wanted from the royal families basically, or all of them, or kidnapped someone. With all their resources and what seems like quite a bit of knowledge the rebel reds seemed spectacularly stupid with this. If you read this book, I suggest you don't question anything or maybe read it with an eye to figuring out which questions will be explained later and which are just not a well pre-planned book. I don't think I'll be reading the next book in the series when it comes out, although I might be interested enough to read the back cover blurb or a few reviews.
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
Very enjoyable if a little derivative
By T. Ing
Mare Barrow is a Red. In Norta, this means that she's a normal human being, poor, and needs to scrape a living for herself and her family through thieving and general servitude. Reds are seen as the lowest of the low by Silvers, who have magical abilities that are highly esteeemed in the country. Mare and her family and friends despise Silvers, who treat Reds like dirt and have Reds fight an unending war with a neighboring country for them.When circumstances for Mare send her right into the path of royals, she ends up discovering that she has magic abilities - and thus, is made a noble who is set to marry the second of two princes so that the reigning royal family can keep an eye on her. Meanwhile, an uprising is gathering through the country, and Mare has to figure out who she is and where her loyalties lie.This one was hard to review because on one hand, I found the story very compelling, but on the other hand, there were lots of little things that I just couldn't get into. I've broken them down below.Things That Frustrated Me:The heroine: my biggest frustration with this book was the lack of character development in Mare. I didn't feel like I went on a journey with her as a character at all - she was kind of sassy and funny, and she clearly had some cool abilities...but that was it for me. I didn't feel like I knew her at all by the end of the book because she was the same person the entire way through. That was hard for me to connect with.The romance: There were (count 'em) THREE love interests for Mare in this book. None of them really go anywhere big, but it just felt like every friggin guy in the book was into her. The hardest part about that is that there is an obvious choice - I genuinely thought that one guy was better than the others, and that just makes for a love triangle (or square?) that's unsatisfying.The writing and the "I've Read This Before" feeling: There would be moments that I was really into the writing and then I would get pulled out of it by just a few too many cliches. Here are some examples:"I'm standing on the balcony a full ten seconds before I realize it's raining, washing me clean of my boiling anger."To me, this is just obvious writing - because there could have been a better description of the character's anger or the rain or just the fact that she was being cooled down by the rain...but it just ends up lost in cliche."This is the world I'm trying to bring down, the world trying to kill me and everything I care about...I've never felt smaller than I do now, with the great bridge looming above us. It looks ready to swallow me whole."Again, the writing feels very obvious. I feel like I've read this line before - "bring down" "never felt smaller" "swallow me whole" - it feels a little tired.The tropes: The problem with obvious writing is that if you have a story hat relies on a lot of tropes (poor girl who's special and different; prince who is not thrilled about being prince and just wants to be normal, world that is separated into classes that needs to be overthrown), you can guess what's going to happen, and your mind tends to wander. And because of that, every scene starts to feel predictable, and you notice every trope for what it is, instead of the trope extending beyond just a trope. It's frustrating because I couldn't help but notice and compare this book to a ton of other YA books (I thought of The Selection, Divergent, Hunger Games, even Harry Potter while I was reading), and the book never went beyond or did anything better or different with those tropes.Things I Liked:The world-building and concept: I liked how the Silvers and Reds were divided and how there was hierarchy even among the Silvers - there were higher and lower houses and they each had distinctive features. I enjoyed getting into this world through Mare's eyes - as a Red, she really doesn't know much about it, and it's both interesting to see it develop and to see her thoughts on it in her unique position.The princes: There are two, and they are both interested in Mare romantically. To me it felt very obvious who the superior prince was, but I liked that they were well-rounded and different enough that they kept me guessing on their true natures. I felt like I knew more about them than I did about Mare by the end of the book.Julian, the elderly wizard Silver who has Mare's best interests at heart and is awesome: This is a classic fantasy trope, but damned if I didn't really like Aveyard's version of the mentor. I especially liked the detail of how his skin was like the parchment that he read so much of, his abilities, and his secretiveness about his own life.The villains and layered secondary characters: I'm not going to tell you who the villains are because that's complicated, but I liked how many of them there were, and how much they all influenced and encroached on Mare's life. I also liked how a lot of the characters in the novel weren't all black-and-white - some of the people who were supposed to be "good" weren't exactly the nicest or best people, and EVERYONE in the novel lied in order to get what they wanted. It's a dark view of life, but it worked.The fast pace and the action: This is probably the first fantasy book I've read in a long time that I haven't put down because it had too much exposition or description and not enough action. The action scenes are pretty explosive, and the pacing moves quickly to bring the action to head.The Final Word:Red Queen is a very enjoyable, if derivative, fantasy read. Brimming with action and classic speculative fiction tropes, this is a good book for younger teens new to fantasy or looking for a book with magic to devour like popcorn. I wanted more depth in writing and character, but there's no doubt that I had fun while reading.
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