Book 1 in the Red Queen Trilogy
AUTHOR: Victoria Aveyard
PUBLISHED: February 2015
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Fantasy
PREMISE: In a world where people with powers rule over people that don't have powers, a girl's life is turned upside down when she is forced to work for the rulers she hates and then discovers she has a power of her own.
MY REVIEW: Oh boy, here we go again. Once more, here is a book everyone loved. Everyone has gushed about. It even won Goodreads Choice Award this year so this has been a pretty huge book this year. Unfortunately...I didn't get into it that much.
Once again, I do understand why this has become a thing. Just because I personally didn't get into it doesn't mean I don't get the appeal. It's very readable. Aveyard is a decent writer. She describes things wonderfully, I get a...vague sense of the world. There are still some things that don't make sense to me, but I'm guessing most of that will be explained in upcoming books. It's just that honestly, a lot of the plot ideas in this book have been done before and have been done better. In the wake of The Winner's Trilogy/Game of Thrones, dark fantasy has become a thing in YA now. While I'm all for it, it does mean that maybe we need to think outside the box a little more when it comes to this genre. While I do think the author definitely has talent and there's potential here...it still felt like every other dark fantasy book I've read. It probably didn't help that I had read Court of Fives like a week earlier.
To be clear: I didn't hate this book. It's not horrible. It definitely is at least one of the better debuts of this year that I've read. It's just...not very original and honestly I feel some of the praise is a tad overblown as usual. But I do definitely see why people liked it. Heck, even though I'm not totally enamored with it, I'm probably going to read the second book next year. So, this book is good. As good as people have been saying? Maybe not. But it is at least a decent library read and maybe worth a buy if you find it's too your liking.
WHO SHOULD READ: Game of Thrones fans, Winner's Trilogy fans, fantasy fans
MY RATING: Four out of Five people with powers
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