Any contemporary dystopian science fiction novel will inevitably draw comparisons to The Hunger Games or Divergent, but Pierce Brown's Red Rising fully deserves to stand beside them. It's a bone-crunching story of revenge, full of clever plot twists and characters worth rooting for.
Darrow is a young miner on a terraformed Mars, where life as a miner is brutal and short. The mines are worked by the Reds, who are ruled by the Golds--genetically and socially engineered brutes who kill those beneath them for the slightest infraction. Darrow and and his wife, Eo, end up on the wrong side of this equation with tragic results, setting off a labyrinthine journey of revenge.
Brown captures the emotions of lost love and the yearning for something greater, and when Darrow is given the chance for retribution through genetic manipulation, his transformation into a Gold is harrowing. His constant struggle for survival--during which he seems in as much danger of losing pieces of his soul as his life--is reminiscent of the Battle School in Ender's Game. Brown's vision of a criminally stratified future society offers a commentary on our contemporary excesses of materialism and youth worship and delivers everything it promises, in spades. A fantastic start to a trilogy. --Donald Powell, freelance writer