Red Queen

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Two things this book wins on without even trying: the cover and the main character's name, Mare Barrow. These promise great things and boy does this book deliver.

The premise here is set in a fantasy world of haves and have nots. The haves are Silvers, people with silver blood and super powers. They are the ruling, upper class. The have nots are Reds, those with red blood and no superpowers. They are the lower, working class, treated with disdain. Mare Barrow is a Red, a pickpocket who is anticipating following her brothers into the army as a conscript. One evening she runs into a guy who gets her a job as a servant at the palace. An accident happens during the selection of the next princess and Mare discovers she has powers of her own.

This sets up the story for a whole lot of intrigue, politics, cat-and-mouse and overall good vs. evil. There is a bit of a romance, but it is greatly overshadowed by rivalries and a secret rebellion. The plot is intricate but not really that complicated; if you read this stuff regularly you could see the plot twist coming a mile away. That said, the villains just got more and more wicked, making any triumph of the good guys all the more satisfying. The fight scenes with the Silvers using their powers was great. The ending was fantastic.

Mare as a character was someone I alternately liked and then didn't like. She wasn't clever. It is never good when the reader is smarter than the main character. She was used by the other characters like a pawn when she was smart enough to know better. I liked her best when she was fighting, because it was then that her intelligence won out.

Cal, the love interest, was Prince Charming. He's a good soldier, gets along with his dad the King and takes becoming the next King seriously. He was likable without truly becoming a cliche. But his younger brother Maven, Mare's betrothed, is much more dimensional. He's relatively easy to figure out and yet Aveyard is able to portray him as such a study in contrasts. Maven was the one keeping things interesting.

Probably the best part about this book is that the heroes are really good and the villains are really bad. There is a fair amount of ambiguity with The Scarlet Guard (what a cool name for a rebel group!), but things are pretty much black and white when it comes to morals and motives. It wasn't hard to choose a team here. Ordinarily this would make the plot predictable and boring. But, there are enough secrets here to keep things moving along. The plot twist at the very end was a nice setup for the next book in the series.

Amanda Dolan narrates this on audio and does a great job. She is able to bring life to the characters and distinguish them nicely. She made the book all the more enjoyable.

Overall this book didn't wow me like I thought it would. It fell a bit short with regard to predictability and the likability of the main character. But it is a fantastic story and well told. This series promises only to get better.
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