This is a world
divided by blood – red or silver. The Reds are
commoners, ruled by a Silver elite in possession of god-like superpowers. And
to Mare Barrow, a seventeen-year-old Red girl from the poverty-stricken Stilts,
it seems like nothing will ever change.
That is, until she finds herself working in the Silver Palace. Here, surrounded
by the people she hates the most, Mare discovers that, despite her red blood,
she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy the
balance of power.
Fearful of Mare’s potential, the Silvers hide her in plain view, declaring her
a long-lost Silver princess, now engaged to a Silver prince. Despite knowing
that one misstep would mean her death, Mare works silently to help the Red
Guard, a militant resistance group, and bring down the Silver regime.
But this is a world of betrayal and lies, and Mare has entered a dangerous
dance – Reds against Silvers, prince against prince, and Mare against her own
heart.
I’m not going to post the blurb for the Glass Sword as it
goes right ahead and spoils the ending of the Red Queen. Well done publishers
on that executive decision. Pretty much took out any suspense as to what was
going to happen in the first book. Mare (our protagonist) goes and gets herself
betrayed at court. The blurb for the second book pretty much tells you actually
who does that by providing such gems as ‘she makes her escape from PERSON WHO
HAS BETRAYED HER, OMG I BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING!!!’ and ‘pursued by ITS
THAT PERSON AGAIN, YOU KNOW THE ONE THAT BETRAYS OUR PLUCKY HEROINE IN THE
FIRST BOOK, WE HAD YOU FOOLED.’ Words in caps are all mine.
Goodreads have rated Red Queen as 4.10/ 5 and Glass Sword as
3.99/5 and I just can’t work out why they have scored so highly. But then as I
keep telling people, never ever underestimate the power of the teenage girl
demographic.
I wanted to like these books so badly for a number of
reasons. Primarily I love Young Adult fiction. I have read some wonderfully
written and intelligent YA books and I cannot stand when people knock it as a
literary category. Looking up Young Adult books on Goodreads throws out
examples such as Lord of the Flies (holy hell really?!), Howl’s Moving Castle
and The Book Thief. Not that I’m reviewing The Book Thief but that is one book
that made me sit in pensive silence after closing the final page.
But I digress. I also wanted to like this so badly because
of my fondness of finding books which contain female heroines. Contrary to some
vocal opinions out there, strong female characters in fiction (and YA fiction)
is not an overwhelming statistic. If you want me to compile statistics on
female protagonists versus male protagonists in literary fiction then so help
me I will.
The fundamental issue with these books for me hinges on the
point I have just mentioned. Strong female characters. Your protagonist is
important. If they are good then you follow their journey, you have the need to
experience their triumph and if they are bad (as in evil) then you follow their
journey because you have the need to experience their downfall. The main problem
for me is that Mare, our protagonist for these books is just so unlikeable.
Some adjectives that I would use to describe our heroine include
selfish, self-indulgent and my favourite ‘special snowflake.’ As the books are
written in first person narrative we can only see events unfold through the
eyes of Mare and if your story is being told this way then I would say it is
quite important that you care and empathise with the main character.
Whilst protagonists can be unlikeable at times or have
characters flaws or perform actions that make you want to, well do this…
...you should always be rooting for them. With this main
character her entire story, her entire thought process is solely how the events
within this world impact her and her alone. It is very much about her pain and
her suffering but because she also hails herself to be pretty darned amazing
the sympathy well for her starts to run a bit dry.
I hate to compare Mare against what I think is one of the
ultimate YA fictional characters because I don’t always think comparisons are
fair but in this case I feel it may be justified. Shout out goes to Katniss
from The Hunger Games. She is an imperfect protagonist who also tends to suffer
from self-indulgent stupidity and does at times within the narrative act like a
self-entitled teenager but (and this is a big but) you do root for the girl.
Katniss at her core is a good person with honest intentions who is out of her
depth in the world she finds herself in. Whilst her actions may fall short of
the mark they are done with the noblest of intentions and there is no
hesitation on her part to sacrifice herself for those she loves. Mare? Well she
sympathises with and has romantic overtures to a man that kills babies. I’ll
get more onto that later.
So why do I feel that
comparisons between Red Queen and its sequel against The Hunger Games are fair?
Well that’s because Red Queen pretty much feels like a poor man’s version of
The Hunger Games and other YA works. Here is my mini-checklist, apply it to
whatever is appropriate:-
·
Young adult heroine fighting against a totalitarian society
· Unique trait or ability that makes her special amongst her peers
· Flawed character that doesn’t always do the right things but who tries to ‘follow her heart’
· Love triangle that involves male childhood best friend
· Lives in an impoverished part of society with a ‘them vs us’ set up
· Has greatness suddenly thrust upon them whether they like it or not
· This greatness has to play out in the public eye
· Usually as the voice piece of a rebellion (this must be done reluctantly)
· Oh by the way there is a rebellion to overthrow the previously mentioned totalitarian society
· Remains painfully unobservant to key events happening around them
· There is a solitary evil ruler
· There is also a sibling, probably a younger sister who is filled with the purest of pureness and who is very much loved by the protagonist
· The wise mentor who tries to aid the protagonist in her quest will make an appearance
· There is also a kind and emotionally capable love interest who the protagonist tries to convince herself isn’t a love interest because the protagonist just can’t cope with the level of feels. If this were real life and one of your girlfriends were behaving this way you would literally be screaming in their face ‘Just marry him Claire!! For god’s sake he is heaven in a Henley!! If you won’t marry him then by the power of grey skull I damn well will!!’
· Did I mention that the protagonist is a ‘key’ and ‘special’ player in the revolution above and aboard other players that have significantly more tactical and military experience?
· There will be a popular nickname that is used instead of her real name. This becomes more and more commonplace until you start to forget what her actual name is.
· Is there an arena? Or some kind of arena like location?
A maze will also do.
In my humble opinion these two books are adhering to a tried
and tested formula of what has previously been successful however while other
books have some degree of originality (or lots) Red Queen and its sequel doesn’t,
choosing instead to borrow from other, often better constructed, works.
Not only do I feel these books fail with their main heroine
being unsympathetic and also by being a ‘paint by numbers’ piece of YA fiction
it is also massively let down by its supporting characters who have little to
no personality development. The standard love triangle has been adapted into a
love quadrangle. Yay. Yes, please imagine that yay to be the most sarcastic yay
you have ever imagined complete with eye roll.
This quadrangle is between our female lead, two brothers
(slightly tacky there Mare) and guess what? A childhood best friend. Did. Not.
See. That. Coming. All involved in this quadrangle of romantic love have no
real personalities to the point where I genuinely do not care if any of them
get the girl. The only decent one is of course the one that she refuses to
admit she wuvs. Though she does do the platonic teenage bed sharing thing with
them that so often occurs in book two.
What concerns me quite massively is how Mare still pines
towards one of the potential love interests all the way through to the end of
book two. Possibly beyond but book three isn’t out yet. This is also one of the
reasons that I grew to hate the main character during the sequel. The character
she pines for is the one that betrays her during book one. Not with sexy sexy
betrayal (is there even a thing?) but betrayal where he tries to murder her and
multiple others, starts a war, begins to commit mass genocide against those who
are different to him and then becomes the one responsible for ordering horrific
incidents of torture and the deaths of babies.
I could be in the minority but I am pretty sure my feelings
for such a person would take a back seat next to the atrocities they are
committing. But no, Mare still pines away for him like a love sick teenager and
I continue to pine away wanting to smack her round the head. With a brick.
As an aside, what is truly worrying is going on the internet
and finding out that there are a lot of teenage girls who are actually in
support of this Mare and mass murderer relationship. The levels of
romanticising are beyond the pale. I have found comments such as ‘I fall for
the dangerous bad boy so can totally see why Mare would’ and ‘I am feeling very
very sorry for NAME OF BABY KILLER as it doesn’t seem like he is going to get
the girl and I would really like him to get the girl. My fingers are crossed
for NAME OF MURDERER WHO ACTIVELY TRIED TO KILL PROTAGONIST AND EVEN PAINFULLY
BRANDED HER WITH HIS INITIAL AFTER SHE VIEWED THE HANGING CORPSE OF A CHILD HE
ORDERED KILLED.’ Caps are again, mine. Obvs.
I mean who are these people?? Again, I digress.
Maybe they are able to romanticise this relationship because
the way the villain is written is something straight out of panto. At times
when I was reading this on the train I just wanted to yell out ‘he’s behind
you!!’ In fact I would go back and re-read the books just to see if he is
rubbing his hands with evil glee at any point. The problem is I only have one
life and I don’t want to waste it re-reading these.
If your characters fail you, the story fails you and the
romance fails you then at least sometimes you can say it was well written. Erm.
Sadly in this case no. The author subscribes to the old ‘tell don’t show’
method of writing which sometimes has to occur but not for 99.9% of the
writing. Instead of showing us Mare’s feelings we get gems such as ‘I am angry.’
‘It made me feel sad.’ ‘I saw horrible things.’ I may also have skipped an
entire section in the middle of the first book only to find I missed nothing at
all.
The second book is much of the same as the first book, mass repetition
and no subtlety except it starts to read like a poor man’s version of X-Men.
I would like to say I wouldn’t read the third book in the
trilogy but because I clearly subscribe to some level of masochism I probably
will, only because I hate not finishing a book trilogy. But then to be honest I
will probably just look it up on Wikipedia and find out what happens. Something
which I could probably predict now.
I’m going to give it 2 stars out of 5. One star because I
actually finished reading them both and an additional star because it wasn’t a
hard to read book.
If I were to be completely honest I’m going to go out and
say that these books have been written to score a movie deal and is somehow managing to
piggyback off of better material. Unfortunately it will probably do well as a
movie because like I said earlier, never ever underestimate the power of the
teenage girl demographic.
Sigh.
