Review: Beta Rising

 

The main thing this book needed was a big dose of subtlety. There were lots of interesting ideas, relationships, and characters floating around, but they all needed to be treated with a lighter hand in general. For instance, the whole premise of the book is that society has been divided into Alphas and Betas, with Betas being treated as inferior and abused constantly. Although I was definitely weirded out by the concept at first (sorry, it was just giving wayy too many omegaverse vibes), it was alright in practice – especially once I read the author’s note explaining the story’s origins. But it wasn’t hugely effective as a dystopia because it was lacking subtlety. It was just straight-up the Betas are basically slaves and are abused constantly and drugged. But it was really unclear how society had progressed to this point from presumably current times in a single generation because there was no subtlety – how did society come to accept this? Why? What was society like that made people so desperate for structure that they would accept such an arbitrary designation?

The same goes for the characters. Dane’s character arc makes plenty of sense in theory, but it seemed like he went from one beat to the next without making the transitional periods clear. And his feelings about his former friends and family were similarly lacking in nuance. Generally, no matter how horrible the things someone has done to you, if they’re that close to you you don’t just turn your feelings for them off like a light switch; you feel something. And that was missing in this case. Same goes for his relationship with Tobyn and his feelings about rebellion. Like I said – everything needed just a little bit more nuance. Maybe another hundred pages to explore these things?

The other main thing was that there were just a lot of world-building details that were thrown out without a ton of thought given. For instance: if there are almost no flying shuttles and even most of the ultra-rich couldn’t afford them, why could one be used to travel between cities for sports? There were just a few different things like that throughout the book that made the world feel a bit muddled. I also wasn’t entirely satisfied with the extent the sexism and racism in the society were addressed. But I did actually quite enjoy elements of it; once I got past the alpha-beta thing and Dane’s sort of irritating teenage boy voice, there were lots of other characters to enjoy, and Dane and Tobyn’s relationship was very sweet. Lots of potential, but needed just a bit more polishing and development.