Red Rising by Pierce Brown is one of the hottest novels to come out in the Young Adult space recently. The rights for a film have been made, and Brown himself is getting a ton of glowing press from the mainstream media.

Knowing this, I dove into Red Rising, the first book in the Red Rising trilogy, and at first, I was unimpressed. It follows all the tropes of a typical dystopian YA novel – a strictly hierarchical society (which, once you think about a little more deeply, doesn’t make any sense), a hero from the absolute bottom rung of said society, how the elite are keeping everyone else under their thumbs through cruel and capricious means, how the hero initially doesn’t want to fight the system but a family member gets killed, blah blah blah.

Basically the same stuff that drives The Hunger Games. Or Divergent. Or the Maze Runner. Or a billion other YA novels. This is the book that’s getting such wide acclaim?

Then a funny thing happened.

Then I started to care about Darrow. Then I started to get interested in the book. Then I started to enjoy it. A lot.

Not coincidentally, this shift in my thinking started right around when Brown dispensed with the usual YA dystopian cliches and focused instead on telling his own story, the story of Darrow, a Red who finds himself in the middle of Gold society, and realizing that things aren’t quite as simple as they seem.

The first 100 pages are uninspired, mostly worldbuilding and setup, but then Brown dug his claws into me, and soon I realized I couldn’t tear myself away. And that was when I realized why this series is so popular, and why it might become a movie very soon.

Unlike, say, The Fifth Season, Red Rising isn’t a literary book – it is exactly what it presents itself to be – a fun read that’s the equivalent to a Hollywood blockbuster movie. Make some popcorn, get comfortable, and enjoy the ride, because once it starts, you’ll be racing to the finish.

The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin, needs little introduction. Released to great acclaim, for good reason, it marks Jemisin’s authoritative ascendance into the company of elite sci-fi/fantasy writers of our day.

The story follows three women, all of whom are Orogenes, people who have the ability to call upon the powers of the earth. In this world, earthquakes are very common, and whole civilizations have been swallowed by previous quakes. Orogenes are capable of shaping, redirecting, or even causing earthquakes.

Orogenes are also viewed with distrust and suspicion by non-Orogenes.

One of the reasons why I loved this book so much, besides Jemisin’s beautiful writing and her deft plotting, is that it demonstrates one of the great strengths of genre books – its ability to critique and comment on contemporary society. Jemisin, a black writer, draws clear parallels between racial tensions (Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, et al) to the tensions between Orogenes and non-Orogenes. She also conveys what’s it’s like to live as people who have to constantly be on guard, have to watch not just their behavior and language, but also the way they think.

Take, for example, this passage between Syen, one of the main characters, and her mentor Alabaster – who in addition to teaching her the ways of being an Orogene, is forced to sleep with her so that they can make Orogene children for the Fulcrum. The Fulcrum is a school for Orogenes, and children are raised there to master control over their powers:

[Alabaster] rolls onto his back, looking up at the sky, and she thinks that’s the end of the conversation, until he says, “I think you hate me because…I’m someone you can hate. I’m here, I’m handy. But what you really hate is the world.”

At this Syen tosses her washcloth into the bowl of water she’s been using and glares at him. “The world doesn’t say inane things like that.”

“I’m not interested in mentoring a sycophant. I want you to be yourself with me. And when you are, you can barely speak a civil word to me, no matter how civil I am to you.”

Hearing it put that way, she feels a little guilty. “What do you mean, then, that I hate the world?”

“You hate the way we live. The way the world makes us live. Either the Fulcrum owns us, or we have to hide and be hunted down like dogs if we’re ever discovered. Or we become monsters and try to kill everything. Even within the Fulcrum we always have to think about how they want us to act. We can never just…be.” He sighs, closing his eyes. “There should be a better way.”

“There isn’t.”

Being white, I don’t often think about how I’ll be perceived by others, but this is a very real thought process for a lot of black Americans – for many, there’s a constant, unending pressure on them to act a certain way, to say (or not say) certain things. Wanda Sykes makes this point much better and funnier than I ever could. And if you doubt this is true, just take a look at the YouTube comments for that video, always a font of wisdom. Here’s two that stood out for me:

Black people are naturally talented in music. Black slaves were demanded to perform in dinner parties to entertain the white people. It became their natural talent. It’s hard to find a black person who can’t sing or dance.

Or this:

“Ya know what dignified black people hate?   Tapdancin.”  –Wanda Sykes trying to be funny. There are very few dignified blacks.  Learn how to speak first.  And try not to spend the welfare money on booze and cigarettes.

Yeah. Moving on.

The reason I bring this up is because Orogenes have this natural, deep reservoir of power, power that’s controlled by others. The three main characters are all, at some point, have to answer to forces beyond themselves. When they finally do exercise their own powers, the earth itself literally trembles.

The Fifth Season has a lot going for it. You can read it on the surface level, and enjoy it for the story and the fantastic writing alone. It’s easy to read it that way. But like Orogenes, the book’s power runs deep. And that, more than any other reason, is why this is a memorable, worthy read, one that should place it among the firmament of science fiction and fantasy’s greatest novels.