RED VS SILVER
If you haven’t read Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen, and it’s sequel Glass Sword, stop reading this nonsense and head to your library or quick click to your ebook of choice store and find it. While the genre of dystopian YA novels wherein teenagers somehow have unlikely physical/mental powers is slightly overdone (references upon request), you won’t find me complaining, especially when Victoria Aveyard (who’s also a screenwriter so do I see a Red Queen series movie deal in our futures?) is the one setting the scene. The general premise is that society is divided into Reds and Silvers by the color of one’s blood and the abilities that come with it – Silvers being X-Men level gifted and Reds being humdrum normals. And with that divide comes a skewed sense of power – can you guess who are the masters and who are the slaves? This is not a trick question.
IS THE NEXT BOOK OUT YET?
King’s Cage picks up right where Glass Sword left off, which is no where anyone would want to be: in the hands of King Maven, once a charming boy and fair-weather lover to Mare, our heroine/sometimes damsel in distress, he is now a newly promoted, puffed up tyrant. While things may start a bit slow due to Mare’s seemingly never-ending imprisonment, the characters and where their pieces stand on the board of politics and Reds vs Silvers come full circle by the end. An ending in which, if you’re anything like me, will have you open mouthed in a way Mary Poppins would not approve of (it’s a dated reference but Emily Blunt is about to change that). King’s Cage has one of those endings that makes you regret reading a book so soon after it’s release since you know you’ll be waiting at least a year for your characters to fix their (many) problems. But, the upside of reading a book the month of it’s release is that the story will be brand new by the time of your reread! Short term memory loss at it’s finest!
THERE ARE MORE THAN FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY
These aforementioned characters of King’s Cage, a cast readers of the first two books will be familiar with, and a few new-bloods thrown in, are flawed – heartbreakingly, frustratingly so. They’re at times selfish, cruel, unfeeling, with skewed allegiances and maddening decision-making skills. But that only makes the story, which is set in a world that could (hopefully) never exist, more realistic and compelling. As a reader you find your heart softening for characters who make your skin crawl, and rolling your eyes at the characters who’s side you should be on. But that’s humanity in a nutshell; those who are evil – and conversely those who are good – are not black and white and our past colors our future – Red or Silver. I, for one, am curious to see where in the gray this story falls.
