/lit/ - Literature

>>21402512
Anon, you're still reading Red Rising because despite the first series being intentionally dumbed down to reach the YA crowd too (or at least not totally lose them in the sequels), and despite having a goofy premise that sounds like a comic book plot, it still manages to somehow be less hackneyed than a huge swath of serious adult sci-fi and the world still ends up feeling more filled in than plenty of serious attempts.

That might be more an indictment of the genre than praise of Brown, but I have never seen anyone claim Red Rising is great literature, only that it is fun lit, would make good vidya, etc. It's in the same vein as Warhammer 40K, except more explicitly classical Rome/Greece LARP focused and IMO more compelling plots.

Let's compare to serious sci-fi. Is Dan Simons the better writer? Sure. Hyperion is a classic of the genre. The themes are much more complex, the prose better.

But Endymion ends up feeling more hackneyed than Golden Son (the power of love conquers all) because it goes from a serious book into predictable ending. As for Ilium, that clearly has a way more interesting story and interesting setting than anything Brown makes. However it also rambles with no clear direction for 1,700 pages before Simons ends it out of nowhere because the plot has clearly gotten away from him. Cryptonomicon has this problem too; Snow Crash doesn't, despite arguably being written at a YA level. (Ender's Game is another book that is good despite being at a YA level).

Brown makes the world more compelling and filled in over time, you get past the goofy premise and what is left of the YA appeal gets totally dropped at book 4, while most YA the holes in to world become yawning chasms as the story goes on (e.g., Hunger Games).

Even good sci-fi tends to get hackneyed (Revelation Space became standard space opera by book 3, despite book 1 and the stand alone's being wonderfully different). There is plenty of shit genre fiction that never goes beyond that place despite adult content (e.g., Prince of Thorne's, although I didn't think it was terrible, just ok). It's rare for a series to get better anyhow.

I don't need all my sci-fi to be literature. There is a place for stuff like the Zahn Star Wars trilogy of Red Rising.