Review of "Pierce Brown's Red Rising : Sons of Ares Vol. 2" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Perhaps the Young Adult genre just isn't for me. The protagonists just tend to be too much of a Mary/Gary Sue.
So many things I got puzzled about in this book or things I feel should had been explained more.
When he meets Sons of Ares, how are they not worried about being caught by the law enforcement?
His character and personality traits don't seem to fit someone who has grown up in such horrid environment with no education, where heavy brainwashing is common. He looks more like a person who grew up in USA or UK, got a good basic education but then ended up homeless. A heavily brainwashed North Korean for example doesn't chant about freedom and the evils of slavery and whatnot like that.
Did he learn anything about the Golds that was not shared with the readers? Because besides their language and a few manners, we …
Perhaps the Young Adult genre just isn't for me. The protagonists just tend to be too much of a Mary/Gary Sue.
So many things I got puzzled about in this book or things I feel should had been explained more.
When he meets Sons of Ares, how are they not worried about being caught by the law enforcement?
His character and personality traits don't seem to fit someone who has grown up in such horrid environment with no education, where heavy brainwashing is common. He looks more like a person who grew up in USA or UK, got a good basic education but then ended up homeless. A heavily brainwashed North Korean for example doesn't chant about freedom and the evils of slavery and whatnot like that.
Did he learn anything about the Golds that was not shared with the readers? Because besides their language and a few manners, we (and I presume Darrow) don't know anything about the culture of Golds. He needs to know all these things or he will end up sticking out like Tarzan in New York. Not good for spying business.
Some minor character was ranting about equality and how people can never be equal because one is prettier than the other and for that reason democracy wouldn't work (huh?). That is not equality, he is talking about sameness. Equality is about equal opportunity despite differences, sameness is about being the same as everyone else. You might ask, so what that he ranted about it? The author didn't make it clear that he, unlike the character, doesn't have the same distorted view on equality. I got the sense that author really equates equality with sameness.
The book actually gets more boring for a while when he gets to meet Golds. There is no sense of wonder or change of paradigm or seeing the greater world. Almost nothing is also learned about Golds. There is no real world building! It's very bare bones and isolated from the book universe.
I do hope the next book is a lot better and won't have so big issues. After all it's Pierce Brown's first book. I am also looking forward to what happens with Darrow and the whole situation.
