Paul Weiss's Reviews > Red Queen

“The gods rule us still … And they are no longer kind.”

“And we will rise up. Red as the dawn.”!

RED QUEEN is a timely and thrilling dystopian young adult tale of revolution in the face of authoritarian rule by a patriarchal royal family and a right-wing population that see privilege and rule as their right by virtue of their physical superiority (endowed, of course, by no more than the coincidence of their birth genes). Mare Barrow’s world is populated by two peoples separated by their DNA and their blood – red (effectively like yours and mine and our fellow normal and human readers) or silver, that comes with a bewildering variety of fantastic and near magical powers.

It isn’t difficult to guess that the themes such a novel would touch on would include coming of age and young love (including, of course, the almost mandatory love triangle); family; war and death; slavery, totalitarianism, and revolution; courage and heroism, loyalty, and friendship; compassion contrasted with anything that a reader might consider its opposites; government; hereditary royalty, and more.

While I saw RED QUEEN as located in the center of a square cornered by Suzanne Collins’ THE HUNGER GAMES, Kristin Cashore’s GRACELING, George RR Martin’s GAME OF THRONES, and (believe it or not!) John Wyndham’s perennial sci-fi classic, THE CHRYSALIDS, I would rush to assure potential readers that there is absolutely nothing in the least derivative about Aveyard's delightful novel! And it certainly isn’t difficult to imagine Mare Barrow’s plight; her mental outlook, emotions, and physical characteristics; her conduct; her decision making; and her trials and tribulations as being a thoroughly innovative construct that draws on pieces of Katniss Everdeen, Karsa, Daenerys Targaryen, and Petra Storm.

When I reviewed THE CHRYSALIDS, I closed with the following thought:

“Analytical readers will be mindful of the irony in the closing chapters as it is clear that the more advanced community is as repressive and intolerant as the community from which the children fled. Wyndham leaves us with the unresolved open question as to whether Man's evolution into a new species will perforce require the extinction of the remaining members of the previous species.”

RED QUEEN leaves us on a minor cliff-hanger pondering a similar question regarding the difficulties of co-existence of evolving hybrid species in the sequels that obviously follow!

Definitely recommended

Paul Weiss