Mini Reviews: Red Rising and The Waking Dreamer

Red Rising (Red Rising Trilogy #1) by Pierce Brown

This book is...complicated. It took place over a lot longer period of time than I'm used to reading. (Hell I'm pretty sure the TMI series has only gone through like 6 months of time in 6 books) It made it feel a lot more realistic and I really appreciate the small details that were used to make the time passing apparent.  I had a hard time deciding whether I liked the book or not for a lot of it - I loved parts, really didn't love other parts, and the pacing seems really weird at first, but it's just because the book didn't end up going where I thought it was going to.  That being said, by the end of the book I was completely sold on this series! Because this book took such a big turn from where I thought it was going, I honestly am not sure how Pierce Brown is going to plot out the rest of the series. He's laid some good groundwork here  SPOILERS I'm seeing both Cassius and Jackal being big players - if not in the next book, then definitely in the last book. He's inserted the main character into pretty much the most powerful family, and there's a lot of complications now (unsurprisingly) because he has some true allies in the Golds. So is he going to try and turn some of them to his cause? END SPOILERS

In any case I'm desperately going to try and get my hands on the rest of the books and I'm glad I waited so long to review this because now the next book is out!

The Waking Dreamer (The Waking Dreamer #1) by J.E. Alexander

I feel really bad having to say this. The premise of this book is awesome...but the writing fails the story. There's an overabundance of action scenes at the cost of world building and character development. And probably plot too - I honestly didn't know what was happening most of the time. Although disclaimer, once I hit the 35% mark and I was really not liking it, I skimmed the rest of the book. So if I missed an understanding of what was going on, it's likely that's entirely my own fault. I'm just so disappointed - especially after an opening like this one, I had really high hopes for it. But there's a serious case of instalove. Like the dude is in love and I swear they've said two sentences to each other until the very end of the book.

Good Things
- The idea of the story
- There's diversity in race (but everyone one is bloodyDamn gorgeous to the point that it's obnoxious)
- If you love movies, you will love all the movie quotes. On the flip side if you think making everything a movie quote is something only turds do, it will annoy you so badly that I don't think you'll be able to read more than a page of this. I fell somewhere between these two - it didn't annoy me, but it didn't do much for me either.
- Character development is...not the worst I've seen. But not a lot of it happens. For the most part the characters are't just stereotypes though, which I see enough that I'm grateful this book didn't do that.

Bad Things
- Was there a plot most of this? Or rather...did we know ANY of the plans?
- World building is severely lacking. I mean you can tell the author knows what the rules of the world are, but he certainly doesn't share that with us. The explanations are wasted explaining things we've already figured out.
- INSTALOVE. LIKE SEVERE INSTALOVE.

So...no this book wasn't for me.  But the premise is intriguing and I think given the opportunity to write some more J.E. Alexander could come up with some very creative stories, so I also won't write off any future stories he might have for us.