Note:
I originally wrote this review after reading Red Queen for the first time in December of last year, but I never
got around to proofreading and posting it. I’m currently marathoning the entire
Red Queen series, and I’m posting
this review after reading this book for the second time. I also read Cruel Crown at the end of last year, but
I didn’t have enough to say about what I thought about that book to warrant
writing a review for the book.
Right off the bat, I have to say that I absolutely loved
Victoria Aveyard’s book, Red Queen,
and I found it to be insanely addictive as I was reading it. Red Queen is definitely one of my top
favorite books out of all the books that I’ve read so far this year; and the
more I think about it, I would say that it has even surpassed Sara Holland’s
book, Everless, as my #1 favorite
book out of all the YA fantasy books that I’ve read this year.
There’s definitely a lot to love about Red Queen, and one of the many great things about this book is
definitely the characters. Red Queen is
definitely a book that’s full of well-written, complex characters; with many of
them being morally gray characters. The fact that a lot of the characters in
this book demonstrated a certain amount of moral ambiguity, while also still
being likable characters, is definitely one of the things that I loved most
about this book; because I’ve always been a huge fan of TV shows, movies, and
books that feature morally gray characters.
Personally, I think that Mare is a great protagonist, and I
thought that Aveyard did a fantastic job of writing her in such a way that
she’s a very complex and nuanced character. I really enjoyed how Mare was very
confident and unapologetic about being a pickpocket, which is something that
really upsets her mother. Mare is also a very bitter person, especially when it
comes to people who are Silvers; but at the same time, I ultimately think that
she does have a good heart. After all, one of the plot points at the beginning
of Red Queen that really kicks off
the overall plot of the book is her trying to help her friend, Kilorn Warren,
avoid being conscripted into the army since there’s a war that’s currently
going on; which Mare’s brother, Shade, had apparently died fighting in. Her
efforts to try and help him avoid conscription led to her sister, Gisa’s,
sowing hand being broken after she (Gisa) tries to pick somebody’s pocket. It’s
not explicitly stated that Gisa’s sowing hand will never be able to properly
heal; but based on Gisa’s emotional reaction and Mare’s guilt over the
incident, I got the distinct impression that her sowing hand being broken meant
that Gisa was going to lose her job as an apprentice to a silk embroiderer.
As weird and as random as it might sound to some people for
me to describe Red Queen as being
reminiscent of the aforementioned Everless
since this book was released first in 2015, and Everless was released last year at the beginning of January, there
were still a couple elements of this book that reminded me a lot of Everless; mainly the writing for Mare,
and Sara Holland’s writing for the protagonist of the Everless duology, Jules Embers. Much like Mare is portrayed as
being very bitter towards the Silvers due to her family being very poor, and
the way that Reds in general are treated by the Silvers; Jules and her father
are also very poor, and Jules feels a lot of resentment towards the Gerling
family, who’re very rich, and pretty much anybody who has more money than she
and her father have.
One of the main things that caused my love for this book to
surpass my love for Everless is that
I felt like Aveyard did a great job of conveying Mare’s bitterness towards
Silvers to the readers without going overboard. When it comes to Everless, I feel like Holland really beats
the reader over the head when it conveying Jules’ bitterness towards the
Gerling family, and pretty much anybody who has more money than she and her
father had. To be fair to Holland, she did eventually stop having Jules constantly
express resentment towards anybody who have more money than she and her family do;
but sometimes I wonder if she didn’t have enough faith in people’s ability to
understand Jules’ feelings of resentment. As far as I’m concerned, Aveyard did
a great job of not going overboard when it came to how she handled Mare
expressing resentment towards Silvers, and the overall rather cynical outlook
on life that Mare seems to have. I’m thinking that she ultimately had more
faith in people that they would understand how Mare felt when they read this
book, than Holland had in her readers.
In addition to Mare being a great protagonist, I thought
that this book had a great variety of supporting characters. While I loved Cal
Calore and thought that he was a great character, out of all the supporting
characters that are featured in this book, Maven Calore is definitely my favorite
character, aside from Mare. While I pretty much saw Maven betraying Mare coming
all along, Aveyard still managed to surprise me when it came to the extent of
Maven’s betrayal, and his actions towards the end of the book. I’m not sure
what this says about me as a person; but while I loved Maven from the get-go, I
honestly love him even more than I originally did after having finished reading
the book, and seeing just duplicitous and bad he can truly be. I would also
like to mention that my absolute favorite quote out of the entire book is the
following Maven quote, which is on page 352 of the hardback edition. “The truth
is what I make it. I could set this world on fire and call it rain.”
Ultimately, I think that quote does a great job of
demonstrating how twisted and crazy Maven’s way of thinking actually is; after Maven
having spent pretty much the entire book leading up to that point presenting himself
as an ally to Mare who cared about her. Plus, I just think that line is very
clever, and a great example of Aveyard’s talent for writing really great
dialogue. That being said, I’m really excited to see where things go with Maven
throughout the rest of the Red Queen
series after him being crowned King of Norta at the end of the book.
I also think that Evangeline Samos served as a great rival
to Mare throughout the book, and as far as I’m concerned, she’s just an all-around
great character. Plus, I think that her having the ability to manipulate metal
is a pretty cool power to have; but then again, I think that Aveyard did a
fantastic job of coming up with very cool and unique powers for all of the
characters in the book to have. While I don’t really have any issues with the
character development for Evangeline at this particular point in time, I still wish
that she had been featured in the book more than she was; because I really
enjoyed the rivalry between her and Mare in this book. One of the things that I
especially loved about the rivalry between Mare and Evangeline is the fact that
Mare wasn’t a complete and total doormat when it came to dealing with
Evangeline; and she was ultimately capable of standing up to Evangeline. One of
the things that I hope to see in the other books in the Red Queen series is definitely more of the rivalry between Mare and
Evangeline.
Julian Jacos is another really great character, and I really
enjoyed the dynamic of Mare’s relationship with him as he was serving as her
tutor, and was trying to help her to better understand her powers throughout
the book. Plus, sometimes I honestly find myself thinking that his singer
power, which enables him to control people’s minds, is even cooler than Mare’s
electrokinesis powers are. That being said, this book features a lot of other
great characters that I haven’t mentioned. It’s just that the characters that I
mentioned really stood out to me the most when it came to the things that I
liked the most about this book.
I definitely have always had very mixed feelings about romance in YA books. That being said, I
thought that Aveyard did a great job of handling the Cal/Mare/Maven love
triangle throughout the book. While I pretty much saw the whole thing with
Maven betraying Mare coming to a certain extent, I have to admit that I still
found myself being very emotionally invested in the relationship between Mare
and Maven; and I still really enjoyed the interaction between the two of them
throughout the book. That being said, I also really enjoyed the romance between
Mare and Cal as well. Even though I can’t really root for Mare and Maven to
become a genuine couple anymore, I’m still very excited to see how the whole
Cal/Mare/Maven situation continues to play out throughout the rest of the Red Queen series.
While the overall plot of Red Queen is incredibly interesting and engaging, the book also
features a variety of interesting subplots. In addition to Mare discovering her
powers and learning how to use them, while also having to adjust to posing as a
long-lost member of the Calore family named Mareena Titanos, becoming involved
with the Scarlet Guard, and dealing with the aforementioned love triangle that
she was involved in with Cal and Maven; she still had to deal with all of her
family’s problems to a certain extent throughout the book.
Honestly, I was very surprised by how much Aveyard was able
to accomplish in this book in terms of establishing the premise of the Red Queen series, introducing Mare and
all of the other main characters in the series, providing exposition and
worldbuilding for the series, while also having the plot of the book be action-packed;
but at the same time, the writing for the book didn’t come across to me as if
she was trying to cram too much into just the first book alone. While I was
definitely surprised by how much Aveyard was able to accomplish in just this
book alone, I was also very pleasantly surprised by the pacing of the overall
plot of Red Queen.
Prior to reading this book, I was honestly half expecting
Mare to not discover the fact that she has powers, despite the fact that she’s
a Red, until a little bit later on in the book than she did; instead of
displaying them for the first time in chapter seven. I was also really glad to
see Aveyard not drag the Calore family coming up with a plan to deal with the
discovery that Mare is a Red who has powers out very long at all. Even though
this is a fantasy series, it actually makes a lot of sense to me that a royal
family would want to deal with a situation like this as quickly as possible, in
an effort to try and avoid a major scandal that would draw a lot of unwanted
attention from people. I think that it would have been really odd if Aveyard had
had Mare demonstrate her powers for the first time, and then wait two or three
more chapters, if not even longer than that, before the Calore family came up
with a plan for how they were going to handle the situation with Mare.
As interesting and as engaging as I thought the overall plot
of this book was, I have to admit that there were a few elements of the plot
that I thought were rather predictable. However, despite the fact that there
were certain aspects of the plot that I pretty much saw coming almost right
from the start of the book; the way Aveyard executed those plot points kept the
predictable elements of the book from truly diminishing my enjoyment of the
book as whole. For example, I pretty much figured that Shade would end up being
revealed to be alive as soon as it was mentioned at the beginning of the book
that he was presumed to have been killed fighting in the war, since they hadn’t
actually found his body. However, I hadn’t necessarily been expecting Shade to
end up being a member of the Scarlet Guard, and I definitely hadn’t been
expecting him to have powers of his own: teleportation. I also pretty much
figured that Maven was going to end up betraying Mare as soon as he had started
trying to befriend her, and help her deal with adjusting to being presented to
the public as a long-lost member of the royal family. However, I have to admit
that I was genuinely surprised by the full extent of Maven’s betrayal of Mare,
when it came to his actions at the end of the book.
Honestly, the only complaint that I really have about this
book is that we don’t get very much backstory on the war that’s currently going
on. That being said, I’m willing to cut this book some slack for not giving
more backstory on the war than it does, because as I said earlier, there were
definitely a lot of things that Aveyard needed to introduce and establish in
this book since it’s the first book in the series; and I really do think that
she handled the exposition that was given in this book very well. I’ve read a
lot of comments from people on the Internet who have said that the backstory
behind the war is explored quite a bit in the third book in the series, King’s Cage. Personally, I think that
waiting until the third book in a series to really explore an important element
of the series is a pretty risky move for an author to make; because I feel like
doing that could possibly alienate the readers, and cause people to get so
frustrated that they lose interest in the series before they even get to the
third book in the series. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Aveyard
necessarily should have given all of the backstory behind the war in this book;
but I do think that she should have at least given a little bit more
information on the war than she did.
All things considered; this book is definitely an excellent start
to the Red Queen series. This book’s,
and possibly the series’, greatest strength in my opinion, is definitely the
characters. Mare is definitely a very likable protagonist for the most part,
and the book also has a lot of really great supporting characters; with Maven
definitely being my favorite secondary character in the series at this
particular point in time. The overall plot of the book, and the various
subplots, were all very interesting and engaging. Even though I thought that certain
elements of the plot were rather predictable, namely Maven ultimately betraying
Mare, I still really enjoyed the ride. Maven is definitely the secondary
character that I’m the most interested in seeing what’s going to happen next with
in terms of his character development; especially after everything that
happened towards the end of the book.
The world building is pretty good in this book, especially considering
the fact that this is not only the first book in the Red Queen series, it’s also Victoria Aveyard’s debut novel.
However, I really do think that it wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad idea
for Aveyard to give at least a little bit more backstory regarding the war in
this book than she ultimately did. However, I’m willing to forgive that one
particular issue when it comes to what I think about this book as a whole,
since there are so many things that I genuinely love about this book. It also doesn’t
hurt that I thought that Red Queen
was the most insanely addictive book that I’ve read since I read Tad Williams’
book, The Witchwood Crown, for the
first time in 2017.
That being said, my final score for Red Queen is 10 out of 10.
