Red Queen, Victoria Aveyard

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard 

This is the third time that I have the first novel of the series. I read it for the first time a couple of weeks after it came out and I completely fell in love with it, I was charmed by the different abilities of the characters and by the simple, yet different welcoming that the author offered us from the very beginning. The relationship that I have with this book made me go above and beyond that, I completely fell in love with the way the three main characters worked and progressed throughout the novel. A year afterward, Glass Sword came out and I read the first book once again before reading the new installment and once again I was completely lost in this dystopian, yet fantastical world. So, two years forward, I have decided that since the series ended, it was time for me to take the time once again and re-enter the world that became so dear to me. Now that I read it years later, I did notice different aspects of it that have made me simply enjoy more the story. 
Red Queen happens in a country that we come to know as Nortia, its society is divided in two: Silvers and Reds, these being the color of the people´s blood. Yet, Silvers have different abilities, some families are able to control fire, enter people´s minds or even control metal. Our main character, Mare, is a Red and as a consequence, her family is extremely poor, which is the common life for Reds. All of Mare´s brothers have been sent to war as a consequence of them not being able to find a job and Mare is sure that her fate is the same since she wasn´t able to get a job and cooperates to her household by stealing from other people, specially Silvers. By her desperate attempt to save not only herself but her best friend, she makes the choice to connect with people that are working in the underground market and she soon realizes that there is a whole new world out there that is trying to make a change for the society. Yet, Mare moves on with her life and her life completely changes when she meets a young man that she was about to steal from. After somehow getting a job at the palace, Mare´s life changes when she realizes that she is completely different from what she was thinking. She has the complete power to control lighting.
First, I want to talk about Aveyard´s incredible way of narrating and writing a novel. The first thing that has caught my attention every single time that I have read this novel is the intricate way in which she describes and exhibits, not only Nortia but the society that they live in. She is able to take this complex bubble, which holds a whole world, and presents it in a way that every single detail seems fascinating, and I truly believe that it has nothing to do with the story being super creative, which it is, but it has to do completely with the fact that her writing is just so incredible because the words that she uses makes it seem as if it was real. 
Also, I loved the perfect mix she was able to get between romance and action, meaning that it wasn´t just too full of action or dramatic scenes like most dystopian novels do, but it had several romantic scenes that made me swoon over the two princes that I absolutely love at the moment. Something that I want to point out is that since she was able to reach a balance between the different type of scenes, we did get only a few scenes for each prince, but those were just so memorable and showcased them greatly that I believe that any more scenes would have been too much. Also, Aveyard did a great job giving the stepbrothers a distinction because every word and movement that was narrated matched the character, which I thought would be very hard to achieve in a novel that is so complex as this one.
Red Queen is pretty fast paced and I really enjoyed that because I don´t like following the same problem over and over again, so Aveyard was always able to keep my mind going and wandering around the different problems and important scenes that were happening throughout the novel. 
I think the only thing that I felt a little disappointed with was that it followed the typical dystopian pattern. In the sense that it first introduced everything and then, problems and more problems happened and several of them were pretty easy to predict beforehand and the surprise factor was not always present, but I do understand that dystopian novels are harder to write and therefore, the similar pattern is usually the easiest way to get the novel done. 
On the other hand, I want to discuss the characters. I am not going to talk a lot about them since I preferred to discover different aspects of their personalities as the story went on since they all have only small scenes throughout the novel that truly make them shine. But I would like to mention that I absolutely adored the different powers that each house had and the way those powers changed their personalities and the way they acted regarding their surroundings. 
I think I didn´t hate Mare, I just disliked her because she is like other dystopian female leads. She acts without thinking about things and later blaming herself and she is too headstrong, which causes her to get into trouble and get emotionally hurt. Yet, I highly enjoyed her personal comments because they were usually funny and it felt nice to be able to laugh after going through so much with the characters and the atmosphere.
Lastly, I want to mention how I found it so detailed the ways that the characters were planned because every single detail about each one of them was so intricate that it truly enhanced the reading experience for me. 
Overall, Red Queen is a super creative, fun and swoony first installment to a series that will take you to another world, which you will find fascinating and inspiring after following characters that are sometimes heartwarming and other times heartwrenching, all while delivering to give you laughs and tears. 

4 1/2 out of 5 Stars 

Love, Sua