If I hadn't promised my spouse I would read this book, I would have quit sometime in part 1 or 2. In the beginning I found everyone unlikable—the main character, Darrow, was annoying; his wife, Eo, was very two-dimensional; and moving on to the surface of Mars I liked Matteo, but that was about it. Through all this, I hated the narrative voice. There was just something about it—petulance, arrogance, then highbrow British boarding school-esque talk—that just grated on my nerves. When Darrow finally got to the Institute, though, things got interesting.

Finally, I saw some character development for people beyond Darrow. Besides that, I enjoy a good war story, with all the betrayals, strategy, shifting alliances, and machinations that go into it. For all that I hated the first couple sections, I do have to admit that Pierce Brown knows how to write a page-turner, and that was very evident as the story progressed. The battle scenes were brutal but I couldn't tear my eyes away, needing to know what happened next. And the human element—who's allied with who, and the injustice at the hands of the Proctors—made me invested in the story and in what would happen to Darrow, Mustang, Sevro, and the others. For all my earlier complaints, when I finished Red Rising I knew I had to read the next one to find out what happens.