In the future, humanity has colonized the solar system, but is now stratified in a rigid class system that is enforced by science and government alike. Golds are at the top – the nobles, the warrior-knights, the leaders – while Reds – the miners, janitors, and dregs – are at the bottom.

Red Rising is the expected revenge and revolution story you’d guess from this premise, and it features a lowly Red – Darrow, a miner – rising up to bring down the Golds and the entire system along with them. It doesn’t stray far from expectations, but where it does is very interesting.

Everyone compares this to The Hunger Games, but I never read them, so to me the comp is a bit more low brow: it’s Mean Girls on Mars. You got a member from the oppressed class going undercover among his betters, but the ultimate goal of revenge is made fuzzy as they start to enjoy and excel in their new lives.

Unfortunately I didn’t care much for Darrow himself, and I fear this might be the dagger that kills my interest in the rest of the series. I like him as a force, a sort of fluke of physics that draws far more interesting characters in his orbit and causes them to undergo all sorts of interesting changes. There’s Cassius the honorable noble with a hair-trigger temper, Roque the poet and voice of reason, Sevro the survivalist scrapper, Mustang the warrior-philosopher valkyrie.

But Darrow himself is pretty thin, and his abilities and genius seem to ebb and flow with whatever the book needs at the time.

I also take issue with many of the scifi elements of the book, though it’s hard to put into words. It’s a very shallow depiction of the future, where you have to just accept without explanation or background many wondrous things: planetary terraforming, complete genetics editing, cloaks and electric shields and ion blades and on and on. Yet it all feels tacked on, as if the entire story and setting could exist without any of that stuff.

This is compounded by the extreme adherence to Roman and Greek motifs throughout. It’s the year 30XX, yet everyone is acting like Roman gladiators and gods while shooting each other with lasers and flying around in hover boots. It’s pretty silly. I suppose it’s a take on the science fantasy subgenre, but it didn’t work for me.

All this leads to feeling more like a video game than a book. Not inherently a bad thing, but also not what I want from a serious space opera.

Despite all that, the story is undeniably full of incredibly cool moments. Darrow and his cohorts go through multiple harrowing experiences and emerge on the other side utterly transformed, and if you love those types of arcs as much as I do then this book is a veritable feast.

People lose limbs and eyes, philosophies are tested and destroyed and reborn, and lots of people die – even named characters, many more than you’d expect in a first of a series. Everything is brutal and violent without feeling grimdark or miserable. I think that’s a remarkable accomplishment.

Red Rising is a good mix of SFF and action film and I think it’d be best enjoyed by people who have one foot each in those camps. I don’t think I’ll continue with the series, but I also don’t feel like I have to – this is a very enjoyable, very complete book. I’m glad to have read it.