Red Rising

Mars low-society underdog ascends.By Pierce BrownRating: 4 / 5.If George Saunders was right that a story is “a continual system of escalation,” then this was a masterful one. I won’t ruin anything for someone that wants to go for a ride without any spoilers. I only happened to arrive at this book via a stranger’s recommendation (yay for Bubbles and blogs!), finding the title on sale, and not even bothering to read the description before diving in. It’s risky business starting a book or movie with zero advance knowledge, but it’s fun to commit entirely to a story as it unfolds. This book was dark and unapologetically brutal in the way that Game of Thrones often was. The stakes were real, and the way the plot kept bending and turning became astonishing. It struck me like several different popular movies loosely woven into one book with its own clever inventions. I struggled at times with abrupt contextual shifts in place, but it wasn’t enough to slow me down or have me lose interest.…