Red Queen

Written by Victoria Aveyard, this dystopian novel takes place in a small country where the red-blooded Reds are peasants, and the silver-blooded Silvers are the important people who have powerful abilities. Reds serve the Silvers, some of which are wealthy nobles. Mare Barrow is a lowly Red who pickpockets to keep her family alive. After a series of strange coincidences, she is thrown in front of the Royal Court and shocks the elite when she discovers her own powerful ability. No one believes it, but no one will forget it either. To hide this anomaly, the Royals force her to forget her past and remember her "past" as the lost daughter of a Silver war hero. Through her newfound strength and position, Mare helps the Scarlet Guard, full of Reds against Silvers, but finds herself conflicted. What starts as a small flame of revenge for the lies of the Silves becomes full-blown riots, killings. Mare is on a rollercoaster she never signed up for- a rollercoaster of love, emotions, betrayal. The only trust she has: Trust no one.

This book was a very interesting one to me, as it was my first dystopian novel in months. It had a very interesting plot (though at times it felt like The Hunger Games), and the characters were very dynamic (a good thing that does not always appear in stories). It had some very eye-opening lines in it as well, and kept me interested throughout.

Although it contains action-filled scenes, it felt dry to me at times. I do believe that more character development and realistic characterization would have benefited this story. More foreshadowing also would have helped the reader become more engaged, as an author, you should want your readers to be on their toes, thinking about possible outcomes on ever page.

Victoria Aveyard's writing style is unique in the sense that she can easily weave together deep thoughts and action-packed moments without any awkwardness. She is fairly dry at times, and also drags scenes out for longer than liked, but leaves you with a little bit of a blissfully confused aftertaste.

If I were to give this a rating out of 5, I would give it a 3.5. It was a rewarding read, but did not leave as much of an impact on me as I would have liked.