Red Rising Read-A-Long 18 discussion

you did it! take a breath....what did you think?

Yay! That ending left me with a smile on my face. I was in kind of a lousy mood (not because of the novel, just in general), and was hence finding everything a bit tiresome. Blah blah triumph blah blah throne room philosophy / tyranny blah blah celebration in a garden. Then boom! Completely turned things around and lifted my spirits. I mean, I'm not a sociopath. There are plenty of novels with sad endings that make me feel bad -- as they're supposed to. But in situations where I'm not keen on the hero, a "bad guys win" ending can be just what I need. And hey, it was a sad ending for Darrow's lot, but a happy one for his enemies. So, totally socially acceptable to revel in it.

It'd irked me that Darrow seemed to have fooled the Jackal with the whole jailbreak thing. Having the Jackal see through it and get his revenge pleased me no end.

I also liked how Roque suddenly became more interesting and appealing as a character.

Random notes from earlier in the book:

- The assault on Mars was fun, with the space combat and the iron rain. It conveyed a good sense of epic scale and action.

- I'm glad we finally saw Eo through more objective eyes.

- At first, reading on my Kindle Paperwhite (which is how I do most of my regular text reading), I didn't notice Ragnar's dialogue formatting. Maybe my settings downplayed the contrast or something. It only caught my attention when I read a bit on my laptop's Kindle app, where the bold was far more glaring. Interesting choice to do that for him. Kind of like how Death talks in all-caps in the Discworld series.

Omg Roque! Although we could see that coming. Wondering about Mustang now... This book was so much more action packed right from the start. Loved it!