"Red Queen"

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

Book Club Pick

Pages: 383 Genre: YA fantasy dystopia

Rating:

Well, they can't all be winners. Although I do always feel a certain amount of fondness for half-hearted 2010s stories that are clearly trying to capture the attention of fans of a different series.

The premise of Red Queen sounded cool. The world is divided: the common folk with red blood and the elite with silver blood who possess supernatural powers. Mare Barrow is a Red, destined to a life of poverty and military service, until it is discovered that she also has supernatural powers. She is forced to pretend that she has silver blood and is betrothed to one of the princes.

The synopsis of the book will tell you that Mare then has to try to survive in a world where betrayal is the only guarantee and there's violence and death surrounding her plans, but honestly? The plot was so drawn out that I don't think that's even fair to say.

I want to give Aveyard the credit that is due: the writing itself was good. I like her writing style. I'm curious about her more current stuff (in a different series), because I actually very much enjoyed the actual reading of this book.

Unfortunately, the plot fell so spectacularly flat that I just couldn't bring myself to actually care. This book takes the worst of the Hunger Games and the Selection and mashes them together in a soulless reflection of what people assumed teens would mindlessly consume in the 2010s. Sadly, this is 2023, and I'm a harsh critic.

The book spent so much time telling us to not trust anyone and "the only certainty is betrayal" (from the back summary) that when the big twist did come, I was thoroughly underwhelmed. It becomes less of a twist and more the fulfilling of a prophecy that has an unearned tone of superiority over me. But here's the problem: Red Queen without the twist is just a badly written book. The reality that we lived in with Mare for, like, 90% of the book was a silly reality that didn't make sense. Therefore, when the (again: not at all surprising) twist did happen, all you really feel is relief that the plot isn't as ridiculous as you previously thought. Once that relief wears off, you're left feeling disappointed at how clueless Mare was to not also see this coming. Nothing that happened felt convincing enough to make me believe in it.

Mare as a character was also just ... something else. As far as protagonists go, she was infuriatingly passive. She didn't do anything, just followed everyone else's plans. And she usually would spent the whole time whining about it. I also don't think she ever really developed. Sure, she changed her mind maybe a total of three times. But it never felt like she actually learned. The narrative just needed her to have a different opinion, so she did. Her opinions were often very random, too. One minute she would be pro-murdering silvers (because they're all evil), and then the next she would be upset because she realized they have kids. Again, her only character trait was to be whatever the narrative needed her to be.

And please, for the love of God, I am begging YA authors to stop having love triangles where the love interests are brothers. It's gross, it's uncomfortable, it's annoying, and it's never as clever as they seem to think it is. Enough is enough. Let's find a new boyfriend who isn't related to your current boyfriend, shall we?

Whenever I read a YA book that I don't really like, I try to sit with it a little bit and consider if the reason I dislike it is because I'm 22 or if it's actually bad. In this case, I think it might be a little bit of both. I have some real problems with the book, but I would probably have been able to excuse more of the story if I read it when I was a child. This doesn't absolve Red Queen of all its crimes (children deserve well-written stories too), but I am willing to accept that I might also be the wrong demographic. I went ahead and read the summaries for the other books, and while I still don't think they're my thing, it does look like it improves.

Ultimately, I feel like Red Queen can be summarized as a poor imitation of The Selection, which is already a poor imitation of The Hunger Games. I wish the book had let itself be its own work that stood on its own two feet rather than trying so hard to be something it's not.

If you know a teen who is looking for, like, "babies first fantasy," this might be a good book to recommend. And it's certainly an easy read. I just feel like there's so many better books that do what Red Queen was hoping to be.