“Blood Stains, Ball Gowns” Review: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

Source/Format: eARC provided by publisher via Edelweiss (thank you!)
Publication date: February 10, 2015 (yesterday!)
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
Buy It: Indigo.ca | Amazon.ca | Amazon.com | B&N | IndieBound | iTunes | Google Books | The Book Depository | Audible

Mare Barrow’s world is divided by blood—those with red and those with silver. Mare and her family are lowly Reds, destined to serve the Silver elite whose supernatural abilities make them nearly gods. Mare steals what she can to help her family survive, but when her best friend is conscripted into the army she gambles everything to win his freedom. A twist of fate leads her to the royal palace itself, where, in front of the king and all his nobles, she discovers a power of her own—an ability she didn’t know she had. Except . . . her blood is Red.

To hide this impossibility, the king forces her into the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks her new position to aid the Scarlet Guard—the leaders of a Red rebellion. Her actions put into motion a deadly and violent dance, pitting prince against prince—and Mare against her own heart.

From debut author Victoria Aveyard comes a lush, vivid fantasy series where loyalty and desire can tear you apart and the only certainty is betrayal.

Review: 

Mare Barrow is a Red. In Norta, this means that she’s a normal human being, poor, and needs to scrape a living for herself and her family through thieving and general servitude. Reds are seen as the lowest of the low by Silvers, who have magical abilities that are highly esteeemed in the country. Mare and her family and friends despise Silvers, who treat Reds like dirt and have Reds fight an unending war with a neighboring country for them.

When circumstances for Mare send her right into the path of royals, she ends up discovering that she has magic abilities – and thus, is made a noble who is set to marry the second of two princes so that the reigning royal family can keep an eye on her. Meanwhile, an uprising is gathering through the country, and Mare has to figure out who she is and where her loyalties lie.

This one was hard to review because on one hand, I found the story very compelling, but on the other hand, there were lots of little things that I just couldn’t get into. I’ve broken them down below.

Things That Frustrated Me:

The heroine: my biggest frustration with this book was the lack of character development in Mare. I didn’t feel like I went on a journey with her as a character at all – she was kind of sassy and funny, and she clearly had some cool abilities…but that was it for me. I didn’t feel like I knew her at all by the end of the book because she was the same person the entire way through. That was hard for me to connect with.

The romance: There were (count ’em) THREE love interests for Mare in this book. None of them really go anywhere big, but it just felt like every friggin guy in the book was into her. The hardest part about that is that there is an obvious choice – I genuinely thought that one guy was better than the others, and that just makes for a love triangle (or square?) that’s unsatisfying.

The writing and the “I’ve Read This Before” feeling: There would be moments that I was really into the writing and then I would get pulled out of it by just a few too many cliches. Here are some examples:

“I’m standing on the balcony a full ten seconds before I realize it’s raining, washing me clean of my boiling anger.”

To me, this is just obvious writing – because there could have been a better description of the character’s anger or the rain or just the fact that she was being cooled down by the rain…but it just ends up lost in cliche.

“This is the world I’m trying to bring down, the world trying to kill me and everything I care about…I’ve never felt smaller than I do now, with the great bridge looming above us. It looks ready to swallow me whole.” 

Again, the writing feels very obvious. I feel like I’ve read this line before – “bring down” “never felt smaller” “swallow me whole” – it feels a little tired.

The tropes: The problem with obvious writing is that if you have a story hat relies on a lot of tropes (poor girl who’s special and different; prince who is not thrilled about being prince and just wants to be normal, world that is separated into classes that needs to be overthrown), you can guess what’s going to happen, and your mind tends to wander. And because of that, every scene starts to feel predictable, and you notice every trope for what it is, instead of the trope extending beyond just a trope. It’s frustrating because I couldn’t help but notice and compare this book to a ton of other YA books (I thought of The Selection, Divergent, Hunger Games, even Harry Potter while I was reading), and the book never went beyond or did anything better or different with those tropes.

Things I Liked:

The world-building and concept: I liked how the Silvers and Reds were divided and how there was hierarchy even among the Silvers – there were higher and lower houses and they each had distinctive features. I enjoyed getting into this world through Mare’s eyes – as a Red, she really doesn’t know much about it, and it’s both interesting to see it develop and to see her thoughts on it in her unique position.

The princes: There are two, and they are both interested in Mare romantically. To me it felt very obvious who the superior prince was, but I liked that they were well-rounded and different enough that they kept me guessing on their true natures. I felt like I knew more about them than I did about Mare by the end of the book.

Julian, the elderly wizard Silver who has Mare’s best interests at heart and is awesome: This is a classic fantasy trope, but damned if I didn’t really like Aveyard’s version of the mentor. I especially liked the detail of how his skin was like the parchment that he read so much of, his abilities, and his secretiveness about his own life.

The villains and layered secondary characters: I’m not going to tell you who the villains are because that’s complicated, but I liked how many of them there were, and how much they all influenced and encroached on Mare’s life. I also liked how a lot of the characters in the novel weren’t all black-and-white – some of the people who were supposed to be “good” weren’t exactly the nicest or best people, and EVERYONE in the novel lied in order to get what they wanted. It’s a dark view of life, but it worked.

The fast pace and the action: This is probably the first fantasy book I’ve read in a long time that I haven’t put down because it had too much exposition or description and not enough action. The action scenes are pretty explosive, and the pacing moves quickly to bring the action to head.

Book Theme Song: 

But every song’s like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin’ in the bathroom

Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room,

We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams…

And we’ll never be royals (royals).

It don’t run in our blood,

That kind of luxe just ain’t for us.

We crave a different kind of buzz.

The Final Word:

Red Queen is a very enjoyable, if derivative, fantasy read. Brimming with action and classic speculative fiction tropes, this is a good book for younger teens new to fantasy or looking for a book with magic to devour like popcorn. I wanted more depth in writing and character, but there’s no doubt that I had fun while reading.

RED QUEEN came out yesterday! Are you interested in reading it? Do you like fast-paced books with a lot of action, or do you prefer more contemplative reads? What do you think of love triangles (or squares)? Are you into fantasy? Will you be picking this up? Let me know in the comments!