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: 4/5
Red queen
was one of my most anticipated 2015 YA releases so, to say I was really looking
forward to it would be an understatement.
Still, it
was really, really difficult to stay from spoilers. Every post here and there,
every manip and fanart had a little quote or opinion that, considering how
everybody talked about a huge twist at the end, had me squeezing my eyes shut
and just rolling away until the bad spoilers were far behind.
But I
survived, and I got to see (spoiler free) if Red Queen would reach my
expectations and, it did!!
You know
that feeling when you are reading a good book that can’t let you go? You have
to eat, study, that pesky sleep gets in your way too, but you just can’t stop
because the mystery and the world is so compelling you want to get more of it?
That’s what
happened to me with this story, the world, the people, the costumes and culture
are intrigued and well fitted, I wanted to know more about it, to see where the
road would take me and, yes, what that twist was about.
Red Queen
is about a seventeen year-old Red girl in a world where Silvers, people with
God-like powers and silver world rule over and enslave the reds, commoners with
red blood. Mare is our main character, a thief that does what she can to
provide for her family before she has to go to war when she turns eighteen,
just like her brothers and any other red without a job or apprentice position.
Mare has made her peace with it, accepting war as her fate and only wishing she
can one day return home with all of her brothers… that is until her best
friend’s teacher dies and without a job, Kilorn is now facing the conscription.
I thought
it was interesting to see the MC not as a super powerful mega-character, or as
the typical self-sacrificing MC we get to see in most YA novels but rather a
scared girl with no particularly especial trait or ability that is accidentally
thrown into a world much more dangerous than the one she was in.
After
trying to escape with Kilorn and resulting in a bad move for her family, Mare comes
across with a stranger who then gets her a job at the palace where she will
discover she has a power, just like Silvers do, and Mare has to live in the
palace as the prince’s fiancé, pretending to be someone she’s not.
Still, of
course Red Queen is not without its flaws, and some of them come from the main
character herself, Mare. Mare has to leave her life behind to keep her
abilities a secret, powers that make her a target for the Silver elite. She is
torn between wanting her old life back and being capable of doing something to
free her people from the tyranny of Silvers. Mare was the one who drove the
story along but there were moments when I didn’t quite understood her
motivations, or was in agreement with them. I thought that her discriminating
Silvers for being what they were was rather ironical, considering that’s why
she hates them so much in the first place, because they do the same to them.
However, I
do believe this was due to the fact that the first book had to present the
characters and plot, and it is in the next installments that we will see them
grow into the roles they are bound to occupy.
That being
said, I can’t fricken wait for the second book!!!!
Sooo prettyyyyyy...
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