Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (Review)

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

Published February 10th 2015. | My rating: ★★★★☆

Before I start, can I just say how much I love this cover? I think it might be one of the most beautiful ones I’ve ever seen.  

Red Queen is the first part of the story about Mare Barrow, living in a world where the people are divided by blood. Reds and Silvers, the Silvers being powerful and rich, the Reds are poor, living tough lives, and being recruited for the army at their 18th birthday. Mare would be too, but she manages to get a job as a servant for the King. Turns out she has powers, better even than the Silvers. The Silvers hide her among themselves, the ones she hates the most, as a Silver, and suddenly Mare finds herself engaged to one of the princes. We get to follow her struggling between Red and Silver,  two princes, her mind and her heart, and so on.

I actually started Red Queen months ago, hated it, and put it down after 30 pages. That time, I didn’t like the writing, and I don’t think I got a good impression of Mare either. However, because of that, I had ridiculously low expectations when I started it again 5 days ago, and was pleasantly surprised. While I still wasn’t absolutely thrilled about the way the story was written, it didn’t bother me too much. I like Mare’s character. She isn’t a favorite, but I’m really looking forward to some serious development, which I think will happen in the following books.

I must say, I didn’t care much for her love interests. Both princes, while their moral might be a little different, felt pretty much like the same person. They were the perfect guy, who always cared for the girl and would take their parents/lovers/people’s wrath for it. In short, a concept I’m tiring of after so many YA novels. However, I’m hoping to see some development here too, and be able to give the next book, Glass Sword, a 5-star rating.

Another thing I was sad to not see was any girl/girl friendship. I guess Mare and her sister’s relationship was alright, but we didn’t get nearly enough girl power, in my opinion.

Red Queen is a good book. Good, not the best I’ve ever read, and personally I don’t think it’s worth quite the hype that’s going on around it. While it’s a new world setting, it still doesn’t feel completely original. That’s understandable, the fantasy genre is explored to every corner, so trying to do something new is definitely worth a kudos. And she did it well, I was surprised at some points, and I was excited about the Red/Silver concept, it just wasn’t new. I would recommend Red Queen to anyone who likes fantasy with a royal touch (me), but I think you will enjoy it more if you haven’t read many young adult-fantasy books before.

Oh, and the plot twist. Look forward to that!

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