Maybe we do like medical malpractice and wound fucking.

After years of putting it off, I've read rising. I'm shocked because I expected to dislike it, flipped to respect, and ended up utterly baffled by the end.

Red Rising is built off of a rather unsubtle class system, but the author goes in-depth and builds a strong world around this. Through genetic body horror, the servant castes are marked from birth with colorful skin and other traits branding them as impoverished underlings; we follow Darrow, of the most expendable color, who jumps into mineshafts to dig for helium. The prose is tight, Darrow is detached from his world, and the stage is set to make us mad. There is a prevailing theme of total hopelessness which permeates these pages as the status quo is designed around oppression so tight that Darrow's only ambitions are to have his wife not starve, take the bonus rations his similarly oppressed coworkers have grown to expect, and maybe live to 17 in this world that is designed around churning people like him out. As the scope of the story expands, we meet so many people with similarly harrowing fates in this rigid world. The philosophy of the Gold society is full of holes and rhetoric, but beliefs don't have to be solid when they are enforced.

Let's back up. Did you get an ick when I mentioned his age? Me too! Darrow is a child. Eo is, too. They're trapped in a world that forces them to hold their own as adults, in part because they're probably past their average life expectancy as is. The narration during these first acts is of a teenager that is fully world weary and without hope or wonder. When put in a room with others who haven't been through this in a relatively safe childhood, he stands out as odd. He's far from perfect, but he's easy to empathize with. This really worked for me!

When among the Golds, we learn more about their Rome-larping fake meritocracy, and again, a lot of this worked well. The premise does a lot of heavy lifting as Darrow's success hinges on silencing the rage and sorrow he feels to blend into a silly academy he doesn't belong in.

Unfortunately, this was written in 2013, which means the only thing publishers wanted was the Hunger Games. At this point, the book saws off its 40% mark and becomes a camera-monitored wargame in an open ended area. If you were to take all of the worldbuilding I was just praising and saw it off wholesale, the novel would be stronger for it as none of it mattered enough that it couldn't be picked up by context. It is beyond jarring the way the book betrays all of the pacing and plot structure it had up until this point.

And really, that's how I feel about the whole affair. The riveting undercover story that the first chapters lead into never happens, we never see any of the characters we met in the intro again, and I don't believe the wargame handles the themes of the novel anywhere near as carefully. While I don't consider depiction endorsement, I grew tired of the constant sexual violence for men to get mad about, often feeling rather tasteless in execution. I felt no attachments to the bland wargame terrain. Aside from that, I was never given enough of a handle of the wargame to meaningfully anticipate anything that happened, and I realized with dread that the wargame was not the midpoint twist, but Acts 3 through 5 altogether.

It's not a bad debut novel, but I felt duped, even if only because the novel this could have been was demonstrated so well. Pierce built an intriguing world, and I wish he stayed in it.

I'm still losing my mind at the absolute perfection of this series. Veronica Roth is proof that you don't need a lot of pages to create an impactful story. Every page you read has a purpose. It's truly a testament to the quality of the writing how much depth and nuance there is in the relationships between the characters. And omg the romantic couple?? The chemistry between them is just chef's kiss. They're one of my favorite book couples ever!