Review: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

Title: Red Queen (Red Queen Trilogy #1)
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Release date: February 10th 2015
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 4/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Mare Barrow's world is divided by blood—those with red and those with silver. Mare and her family are lowly Reds, destined to serve the Silver elite whose supernatural abilities make them nearly gods. Mare steals what she can to help her family survive, but when her best friend is conscripted into the army she gambles everything to win his freedom. A twist of fate leads her to the royal palace itself, where, in front of the king and all his nobles, she discovers a power of her own—an ability she didn't know she had. Except . . . her blood is Red.

To hide this impossibility, the king forces her into the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks her new position to aid the Scarlet Guard—the leaders of a Red rebellion. Her actions put into motion a deadly and violent dance, pitting prince against prince—and Mare against her own heart.

From debut author Victoria Aveyard comes a lush, vivid fantasy series where loyalty and desire can tear you apart and the only certainty is betrayal.

I have mixed feelings about this book, as there were aspects of the story that I liked a lot, especially the ending and the last chapters are really good but later on go into the plot, but I was not engrossed from the start, it took me a while to get hooked, plus there were some details that I made me some noise, but at the end I really enjoyed Red Queen.

I´ve read that this book is compared to The Selection, Graceling and even Red Rising, but as I have not read any of them, I started my reading without any preconceived idea and I just started to enjoy it.

In Red Queen the society is literally divided by the color of blood, the Silvers and the Reds. The Silver are the privileged class, the royalty and all of them have powers like the X-MEN, while the Reds are the servants and those that don´t have a job or apprenticeship upon turning 18 years old are sent to war.

Mare is a 17 year old girl, she´s a Red and has no job, so at her eighteen birthday she´ll be conscripted, but due fate or luck she ends up getting a job as a maid in the summer home of the royal family, it seems that at last her luck is changing, but due to an accident people discover that she also has a power, that had never seen before and the fact that she´s Red makes it impossible, but to cover up such rarity, the King decides of passing her off as a Silver, until they know more about her and her power. So in the blink of an eye her life is completely changed and she´s in prime location.

For those who like me like their books with romance in them, I can only comment that there is some romance, just not very intense, but the good news is that there isn´t insta-love, no love triangle ..... but there is a love square (¿?), because there are three young men romantically "interested" in Mare.

A secondary plot are the rebels - Scarlet Guard - which are making several violent acts in order to achieve freedom and equality of the Reds.

I liked the world where the story unfolds and I have some theories about it, as it is a mixture of old world with some sort of technology.

I really enjoyed Red Queen, because it has a lot of action, I liked the X-MEN style fights, the romance not so much, but I liked the intrigue and uncertainty, the pace of the story is a bit slow and there is predictability in the plot, but I liked a lot the ending and the last chapters are really good.

Book trailer