Red Queen (Red Queen, #1)

by Victoria Aveyard

[KitsuneBae]

This one’s a disappointment. Instead of a book hangover, Red Queen left me questioning myself whether its positive points are worth the pain that I have to go through while reading the whole thing. It’s not essentially a bad book but I just can’t connect with the story, with the characters, and the whole love quadrangle. The premise, while not that original, was I think one of the reasons why I picked up this book. Got to admit that I wasn’t over the whole Red Rising craze and I thought that the Red Queen would fill the gap left by the former. And as you can see, my expectations weren’t met and it just made me pine more for the third book of Red Rising.

The Red Queen’s setup is based on people’s blood color; the red-blooded being the sort of slaves, commoners, and basically the inferior ones while the silver-blooded are not only privileged nobles but also gifted with extraordinary powers. The heroine, Mare Barrow, is a Red who is more inclined to pick pockets than to serve the military as a means to support her family. However, things turned upside down when it was discovered that Mare is also capable of unleashing a deadly power of her own, an attribute that’s unbelievable for a Red. Said discovery set the plot rolling. But funnily enough, it was one of the things that made me scratch my head towards the end of the story. Much as I want to elaborate, I couldn’t because that means I’m going to spoil a lot of things for you. Just know that the story felt pointless when the big reveal happened.

Character wise, Red Queen does not deserve any form of praising. We’ve got our plucky heroine, Mare, who—as the series progressed—greatly disappointed me because she has a knack for making decisions that usually led to terrifying consequences. And yes, we can just forget about the two princes and the bestfriend who all fell inlove with her. Seriously, people

The romance, of course, is the usual thing in the YAlandia. You have a special snowflake girl and crazily fawning over her are not only two but three hot guys. The book ended with the girl still confused about her feelings for the three. But I guess, it doesn’t matter that much since she got to kiss all of them and then, loath them the next…? I don’t know, I’m as confused as the heroine.
Gripes aside, Red Queen is not without its redeeming qualities since some of the plot twists did render me surprised and thus, enough to warrant a read-the-next-book-in-the-series decision.

Overall, had Red Queen been executed differently then it would have made an awesome read.