Mare Barrow lives in a world that is somewhat like ours, in a sense that it, too, is divided between a ruling and a serving class. What divides the people of this world is the colour of their blood - silver bloods are the ruling class, the people with superhuman powers which earned them the right to live above those who have red blood.
Fierce and intense
Mare Barrow lives in a world that is somewhat like ours, in a sense that it, too, is divided between a ruling and a serving class. What divides the people of this world is the colour of their blood - silver bloods are the ruling class, the people with superhuman powers which earned them the right to live above those who have red blood. Mare, who’ll soon turn eighteen and forcibly sent to war like every other red teenager, is not a girl from your fairytales. But she’s definitely the clichéd strong female protagonist you’ll see in many dystopian novels.
When I picked up Red Queen, one of the most prominent Young Adult books of 2015, I was expecting something magical and intense in a way you can expect coming-of-age books to be. I received more than I had expected in the latter sense. Victoria Aveyard’s plot is well-constructed but not cliché-free.
Aveyard’s flashy description of tense events and a surprise in every chapter was what kept me hooked into her world. Many plot elements were predictable; good guy turning out to be bad, a seemingly ordinary teenager discovering her superhuman powers and realising that she’s the chosen one.
But, despite these flaws, I still fell in love with Red Queen and couldn’t help but grab its sequel Glass Sword (which came out this year) as soon as I was done with Book One.
In Glass Sword, we follow Mare with her journey with the Scarlet Guards, an organisation on a mission to overthrow the tyrant Silvers and free the Reds. The atmosphere in Glass Sword is even tenser and fiercer. The intensity comes mostly from Mare’s thoughts, something that disappointed me a bit. One of the reasons I’m not a fan of first person narrative stories is that you get distanced from the other characters, no matter how wonderful they are. I wonder if Aveyard meant to display Mare’s exceptional narcissistic tendencies and her obsession with being more important than the rest of her allies - if that’s the case, the author has been successful.
Other than the waspish and unlikable main character, there is some unnecessary repetition of lines such as ‘anyone can betray anyone’, and ‘red as the dawn’, and Mare telling herself frequently how important she is, which is off-putting. It would have been wise if the author had trusted the readers to find out Mare’s untrusting disposition rather than chanting the mantra ‘anyone can betray anyone’ throughout the book. I’m quite impressed with Aveyard’s descriptions and the way she built this world and despite not having been able to enjoy Glass Sword as much as Red Queen, I’m waiting for the next instalment in this series. I’m looking forward to see how Mare’s character develops in the next book.
For the most part of Glass Sword, I was reminded of Professor Xavier recruiting mutants in X-men. Shade felt more like the Red Queen version of The Flash. The most likable characters, for me, have been Cal and Kilorn in this book. Kilorn seems to possess more empathy and leadership skills than both Mare and Cal. Cal has lost all the leadership skills and strength when his military training were supposed to be strongly enrooted within him; it would have enabled him to revive from his rather traumatic state of mind. But, again, we are unable to learn much about the inner battles of many important characters because we’re staying inside Mare’s head, and most of her thoughts are about her own feelings and struggles.
Overall, I can say that Aveyard knows her genre well and has weaved the angst, excitement and conflicts of the protagonists’ coming of age pertinently, making this book an enchanting read for the young adult audience.