Red Queen- Victoria Aveyard

Orion Books

Review By Gemma E McLaughlin

I went into Waterstones to pick up this week’s book and I really did try to pick up a happy one this time. I looked around for something cheerful and sweet. I did not look for a visually stunning dystopian work of art bound to break my heart. Yet as is my life, here we are. Before I even begun reading I knew what I was getting myself into, I had heard many wonderful things about Victoria Aveyard’s work and have finally joined many others in intense pain and adoration.

The story begins in a world where everyone is separated by the colour of their blood. If your blood is red you’re normal, nothing more than a servant, there to serve but not be seen. Those with silver blood are treated like gods, they can pursue any career they wish, are in all positions of power and possess various different powers, making them more powerful than reds in every way.

The world is run with cruelty and fear; the silvers started a war over a hundred years before and use the reds as their soldiers. As soon as someone of red blood turns eighteen they must either have a job or be apprenticed, if not they are conscripted and sent to war.

Our main character Mare is red, her brothers are away at the war and her younger sister has a steady job sewing. Mare on the other hand, is a thief. She is preparing herself or face having to leave and almost believes she deserves it, until everything is flung into chaos. Her best friend Kilorn, is panic stricken when a week before his eighteenth birthday his employer dies, leaving him without a job and Mare without a plan to save him.

We follow her in a desperate attempt to save her childhood best friend from a fate he doesn’t deserve and are plunged into the inequalities and darkness hiding just below the surface of their world. We learn more about Mare, and all the ways she could bright down this unjust system and just why the silver’s begin to fear her. She is brought into the core of the deeply horrifying world she lives in and must decide how to handle a kingdom of secrets and the blood of innocents – whatever it’s colour.

I absolutely adored the themes in this captivating treasure of a novel. The immaculate twists of the book made me shake in anticipation at every turn and fear for a world I could never know and yet I feel I somehow do. The characters were strong and every dialogue and description written in a way that made me feel every emotion. The dark, twisted reality of Red Queen made me fear for the future of this planet, not with magic powers and blood but with stark truths on inequality and war.

I can’t wait to pick up all of Victoria’s other books and bring myself back to a wonderful witting style and magical world building. If you, similarly to me adore the haunting beauty of a well written dystopian novel I insist you try Red Queen.