This review was originally written and posted in August 2015.

New book time! We’re going to tackle Red Queen next, a book I started ages ago and had to give up because there was just too much I wanted to say about it. And in only the first few chapters! This should be fun.

We start out with our main character, and girl named Mare, complaining about “First Fridays.” Apparently they draw a crowd, and in the middle of summer that’s just downright uncomfortable. She then transitions directly into how easy it is to steal stuff from this crowd, which is more than a little incongruous. As is the fact that, at the end of her thieving run, her pockets are “bulging” with trinkets. Either these people have very bulky cheap baubles, or Mare is doing way too much thieving.

I mean, I did a little bit of research on pickpockets, and most of the tactics involve finding a specific mark and running some mild con on them, something to create a distraction and an opening. The quick-and-easy “grab and go” only works on people who have their valuables in the perfect nabbing position, and that is not everyone you run across in a random market crowd. Or even most of them. So the idea that Mare could have “bulging” pockets just by brushing up against enough people stretches my disbelief before we’re even off the first page!

It also doesn’t fit with our continuing description of the town she’s in: dirt poor. What, exactly, is she stealing from people?

Mare goes on to tell us that she’s approaching her 18^th birthday, and that in this world if anyone isn’t apprenticed in a trade by that age they end up in the army, fighting some far off war. Mare’s three older brothers have already gone off, and she’ll be next since there’s zero jobs to be had in town.

They have a tradition that each of the older brothers gave a pair of earrings to Mare and her younger sister Gisa, so now the girls each have three holes on one ear, for the three pairs of earrings they split. That’s cute.

I’ve already started saving – and stealing – to buy Gisa some earrings when I go.

Well apparently you get “bulging” pockets when you casually walk through a crowd; how expensive are a pair of glass beads on bendy wire? And how did your brothers all afford a pair, but you’re bulging pockets have to save up?

What are you even stealing?

The crowd is all headed somewhere, Mare going along with them, and she sees little kids running around pickpocketing as well, although the “security officers” let them off with a slap and a shove instead of an arrest because they want to see the First Friday shenanigans. Okay, no problem with that, but it seems like petty stealing is pretty common, so why does everyone have easily-nabbed wallets out for Mare to “lightly brush against” and steal? Usually people who live with this sort of behavior as commonplace…well, they’re used to it and take steps against it as a matter of course.

Barrow meets up with her friend Kilorn, who is as eager to see whatever the show is as Mare is repulsed by it. We find out that Kilorn has an apprenticeship, and also First Friday shows are mandatory unless you have an essential job, with Mare’s sister does. …embroidery. The rich people in charge like their luxuries. Actually, that’s the sort of thing that’s stupid, but totally what a rich asshole who gets to make rules would pull, so.

They arrive at an arena, and there’s a nice little bit about how there’s special seats for the “Silvers,” the richer class, which are magnitudes better than what the common “Reds” get, but they still complain about the “wretched conditions.” I like that, too.

Finally we find out what the show is. Two super-powered Silvers (they’ve all got super powers) getting in a bloody powered fight. That’s it. Just Fight Club with comic book powers. Kilorn likes them because he enjoys seeing members of the oppressive class bleeding. Mare claims they are a tool of oppression, showing off their super powers and reminding the Reds that, well, they have super powers.

I don’t really see it. I mean, first of all, it doesn’t seem like they’re really using super powers to do anything so far. The world we’ve got is set up on economic oppression, and the most visible signs we’ve seen yet are some cops that Mare is only vaguely afraid of and the draft. Neither one of which really need a telepath to enforce. So it seems like these displays of power really are just that: displays of power.

In fact, according to the history Mare spells out for us and the reaction of everyone not-Mare in the crowd, that seems like their intent. So I have no idea why Mare is carrying on so angstily about it. All it does is give me Hunger Games déjà-vu, but while feeling really forced.

Oh, there is a line about how districts with an arena and forced attendance have lower crime rates, so I guess there is that strike against the worldbuilding. Where did authors even get this idea? I mean, history has had plenty of things like public execution and shaming, hell there have even been places where dead bodies are left out as a “warning,” and it didn’t work then, so why would they think anything like that would work now?

Actually, since nothing like this “fight club against crime” thing has been done that I know of, I had to just look up whether or not increasingly strict/scary punishments reduce crime. They do not. So, apparently, scaring people into behaving isn’t a real thing. Which it seems like the book should already know since there’s hoards of kids playing pickpocket even though they’re not even good at it (yet).

Anyway, time for the fight. Two people fight with super powers. One is superhumanly strong and the other controls minds. The mindcontroller wins, of course, by making the other guy stab himself. Mare is annoyed at Kilorn cheering because he “ needs to see [them bleeding] to trick himself into thinking they are truly human, that they can be hurt and defeated. But I know better.” Well, considering they seem to routinely get hurt and defeated in this place, how is Kilorn wrong again?

I mean, that strongarm guy is apparently very vulnerable to sharp stabbity things. It wasn’t a special sword that sliced him open. All you need is a spear so you’re out of punching range.

So how is openly displaying each super-power type’s weaknesses supposed to scare everyone into compliance, again?

Ah, well, we won’t find out today. They’re herded out of the arena and that’s the end of the chapter.

It’s not a terrible opening. There’s lots of infodumping, but at least it’s done in a smooth enough way to avoid throwing people out completely, and the world is different enough that even straight info grabs the attention. Still could have been cut for some relevant event going on, but eh, not the worst thing to open with. Just make Mare’s issue more person, take out the hint of “this actually works,” and have her only steal from a couple people and expending more effort to do it, and it’d probably be okay. The rest of the world isn’t too bad. Yet.