The Red Queen Should Be Read!

A few months ago, I was trying to figure out what book to read next.  I had read all of my favorite authors’ books, as well as mammoth series like The Song of Ice and Fire, and needed to find something.  Then I ran across Goodreads’ YA Novels of 2018 List… where have you been all my life?  It was like this neverending supply of book ideas.  War Storm, by Victoria Aveyard, was #1 on the list for this year.  I can’t read the last book in the series, of course (I made that mistake with Joel C. Rosenberg’s Dead Heat years ago), but in just a few clicks, I found the first book in the series, Red Queen, and put it on hold at my local library.  Several months later, I was able to read it.

Red Queen is based in a land where there are two types of people: Silvers, who have silver blood and magical powers, and Reds, who have red blood and no power.  Our heroine, Mare Barrow, is a Red who has no prospects in life except to get drafted into the neverending war and die.  In the meantime, she steals for a living.  A few random events change her life.  She discovers that, despite her red blood, she also has powers.  These powers push her into a posh prison, faking that she’s a silver in the royal court.

Mare has to figure out how to survive in her new life.  In addition, she’s not the kind of person to lie still and let the corruption around her corrupt her.  She wants to fight for a better life for her people.  But how will she do that?  She begins to play a dangerous game where you’re never really quite certain who to trust… and you’re not quite certain who to love either.

The Red Queen series is popular for a reason: it’s good.  Although I think that Mare is foolish sometimes, I still like her, and think that she was portrayed well.  I enjoy reading about her love interest (or not) with Cal and Maven.  I enjoyed this unique world with electricity and cars and motorcycles… but not too much of it, if you’re not rich.  It’s not a medieval world, but it’s also nothing like ours.  All of these elements add up to an interesting universe.

The book has twists and turns, and you’re not exactly sure who to trust.  There are the “I didn’t see that one coming” moments.  Even though I read the blurb about what the book was about before I read the book, I didn’t know exactly how this book was going to play out, and was kept excited until the end.

Fortunately, even though I had to wait a couple of months to read Red Queen (I read this book and am writing this review at the end of July), the next two books will be available at the library soon, as I signed up to read them at the same time.  I might not get to read War Storm until 2019, but that’s okay.  Although I am excited to read the next installment of this series, I have a stack of books waiting to be read, and I’ll just have to have patience to read the rest of this series.