Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard Book review

Summary:

The poverty stricken Reds are commoners, living under the rule of the Silvers, elite warriors with god-like powers.

To Mare Barrow, a 17-year-old Red girl from The Stilts, it looks like nothing will ever change.

Mare finds herself working in the Silver Palace, at the centre of
those she hates the most. She quickly discovers that, despite her red blood, she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy Silver control.

But power is a dangerous game. And in this world divided by blood, who will win?

My rating: One worm!

This book was painfully predictable, and it was a shame because Red Queen was well praised for being original and unpredictable. I thought I would love, or at the very least not hate it with a blinding passion.

The premise is like a mix of different YA dystopian novels in one poorly executed book. You've got the Hunger Games with the fights the goverment forces people to watch to display their power, pretty much the entire summary of Red Rising by Pierce Brown, The selection with girls fighting to marry a prince, and a little bit of Divergent there as well.

 Our Heroine is Mare Barrow living in a world were class differences are settled by blood; Reds are commoners, they have red blood and are oppressed by Silvers, people with God-like powers who are rich, stiff and colds, because why give depth to your characters when they can be plainly evil just for having money?

 Mare is obviously a Red, who pickpockets people to feed her family. When she turns eighteen she’ll be sent to war like all reds without a job, unlike her sister Prim who is prettier, and better and has a job embroidering that will sustain the family once the others return from the battlefield. But when her best friend is going to be sent to fight, Mare convinces her sister to take her where she works so she can steal from Silvers and pay someone to take her and Kilorn far away without considering the punishment her family might receive if she becomes a deserter (They would probably be publicly executed for it).

However, when that fails and her sister hand is broken for stealing, ruining her life and her entire family’s, Mare will meet the crown prince as he acts as a commoner.

When she tells him her life story, (because the plot required her to her poor judgment believes it’s a good idea to tell that to a stranger), the Prince thinks it’s smart to give a thief and deserter access to the palace and it’s many priceless, stealeable stuff, and so he gets her a job there. But when shesomehow happens to know exactly how to do a work she was never trained for, an accident happens that shows Mare is a Red with Silver powers.

If people discover that Red might have powers too, the balance of power could shift in their favor and so Royal family is hell bent in keeping it a secret, but because that happened in front of too many people, the King can’t kill her, so instead he says she is a lost silver who never knew her heritage, even though that would imply Mare never bleed in her entire life, or blushed, or scratched or had a bruise or had her period (Remember silver blood). And he also engages her with his younger son, Maven because we needed the love triangle between two brothers.

So Mare most survive and army of mean girls (It’s YA and girls must hate each other for carrying two X chromosomes considering they are always cisgendered), messy hormones and her own stupidity.

Mare was one of the worst aspects. At first she appears as a simple girl in a family of many who didn’t have skills to set herself apart from the rest. She pickpockets to give her family money, but they of course are against it, which is understandable but also hurtful; Mare believes the only good thing she can do to help is that because she doesn’t have a talent like her sister does, and although she knows what she’s doing is wrong, it still hurts her that her family denies her contributions, which is also understandable.

I didn’t like Mare because she was a coward who never took responsibilities for her own actions.
Because she talked about killing people as “a trade she was willing to make” and was taking these people’s lives away and making it about herself. I disliked her because her reasons for starting a revolution were all wrong. She was a hypocrite, being disgusted at silvers for killing when she was killing people herself, everything wrong they did was despicable, everything wrong she did was for a greater cause. She trusted people with vital information even though she barely knew them. She couldn’t make up her mind for ten seconds (not even when she was deciding who lived and who died!). She betrays people, uses them and never owns up to her wrongs.

Even though Mare could have used her wits to befriend people, get some sort of allies in a place where everybody is watching her closely and could kill her and her family at any minute, she treats them like crap, and then acts all angry when they don’t want to help her even though she’s asking them to commit suicide. She snaps at Silvers and looks down on them because of their blood never realizing she is doing the same thing she hates Silvers for so much.

It was so weird and annoying how she couldn’t make up her mind about anything. One second she wishes someone dies and that they are worthless rats and the next she’s worried she hurt their feelings. It was borderline bipolar.

But the worst thing, the worst of all is that she never grows as a character. I could have dealt with all of that if Mare had grown, if she had realized that what she did was wrong, but she never did. In all that time, after the betrayals, the lies and twists Mare keeps making the same mistakes.

I was not a fan of the writing style, it was a “tell and not show” kind which killed any excitement the book could offer. It also had some weird things like:

How they can stand it, I don’t know.

What that might be, I don’t know.

He says it measures electrical energy, but how I don’t know.

Where he’s leading now, I don’t know.

What they could possibly be, I don’t know.

How she can watch her friends bleeding on the floor, I don’t know.

And why this frightens me, I don’t know. Why I care, I can’t say.

The voice pleads, but for what, I don’t know.

“There were more ahead, but they got to the river. How many, I don’t know.”

But because he hurt Farley, or because he couldn’t make her talk, I don’t know.

What this means, I don’t know. What I feel, I can’t begin to understand.

How anyone can misplace an executed man, I don’t know.

How Will came to be here, traveling all the way from the Stilts, I don’t know.

Where he leads, I don’t know.

The world building was really poor.

Mare lived in The Stilts, silvers with plant powers were Greenies, Silvers with telekinesis were Telkies, they spoke the Common Tongue, an industrial city was Gray Town. It was so dumb.

The book held no surprises at all, and all I could do was laugh at the stupidity of it.

Red Queen is not worth the hype, and it’s certainly not worth your time.