HERALDED by a fanfare of critical acclaim of which its plethora of royal characters would be proud, Victoria Aveyard’s debut raced determinedly to the top of the New York Times bestseller list this year. Although its genre is ostensibly Young Adult literature (class 9 and upwards), the book grapples consistently with issues of power, betrayal, revenge, and hatred that feed into making it a fast-paced, but rather disturbing read. Lest puritan minds begin to sit in moral judgement on Aveyard’s agendum, however, one should remember that for decades Shakespeare’s Macbeth has often been in school curriculums for 14-year-olds, and in many ways Red Queen contains modern echoes of the bard’s famous text. Cruel and sadistic queens, barbaric and callous kings, supernatural shivers, and dirty politics abound in this hybrid of the aforementioned play and Veronica Roth’s postmodern Divergent.

The heroine, Mare Barrow, lives in a country called Norta where two types of people exist: those with red blood and those with silver. Silvers dominate and oppress Reds, primarily due to the fact that they possess paranormal powers. Some can manipulate water, others fire, yet others metal; some read minds, a few can hypnotise, and so on. Regular and ordinary humans, the Reds chafe under Silver superiority and dominance, but since Aveyard cleverly creates a dystopian world that has valid racist and colonial issues as its inspiration, the reader does not question the framework of the novel’s power dynamics. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to note that the reader never really gets the time to question them.

The plot of the book proceeds at a breakneck pace from the point where Mare encounters one of Norta’s Silver princes — when he is in disguise — through her subsequent adventures as a transformed princess with red blood (but special powers of her own that have arisen from a mutation). Director of X-Men Bryan Silver would have a field day with a film script based on this narrative. Prince Cal ensures that Mare gets a job as a palace servant, but when her ability to create and channel lightning is unexpectedly revealed, his parents force her to pretend that she is a Silver raised by Reds, even going as far as to betroth her to Cal’s younger brother, Maven. The reason for this is political, since Mare’s background is expected to appease and mollify many Reds, who resent being under the difficult imperial yoke of King Tiberias.

Tiberias, who has the ability to control fire, and his queen Elara, a wicked mind reader, are at war with Norta’s neighbour, Lakelands. Naturally, the Reds bear the brunt of the fighting and the untenable nature of the situation is underscored by the rise of the Red Guard, a seditious organisation whose rebellion gains strength over the course of the book. Mare finds herself divided between her growing love for Cal and her affection for Maven, and further divided between her life at the palace and her loyalties to her Red people.

The Royal House of Norta takes pains to groom her into a true princess: she undergoes training in protocol, warfare, geography, and even ballroom dancing. Un­­fortunately, while plot structure is one of Aveyard’s undeniable strengths, character development most emphatically is not. The novel is written in first person, but Mare’s thoughts often come across as the ramblings of a teenage girl’s private diary — angst-ridden, self-absorbed, and tonally immature. While this is understandable, given that the character is only 17, this creates a huge gulf between the mature themes of the book and Mare’s problematically fractured personality.

To say that this problem is unique to Aveyard’s work, however, would be unjust. Most postmodern Young Adult literature contains psychologically problematic parental figures (Divergent, Twilight), or simply suffers from a genuine dearth of them (Harry Potter, The Mortal Instruments). As a result child characters are compelled to grow up faster than one would expect, and in Mare’s case faster than is authentically possible.

It can certainly be argued that Aveyard allows her story to burgeon out of control to such an extent that almost every character suffers as a result, except perhaps Cal’s uncle Julian, a wise and refined academic. Maven suffers from ridiculously deep complexes, the queen is unmitigatedly evil, the king remains obdurately out of touch with his people, Cal finds himself unable to reconcile the disparate roles of lover and warrior, and Mare’s family are nothing short of pathetic. On the other hand, undercurrents of Roman insanity and cruelty in Cal’s family make parts of the novel slightly sickening — we are introduced to a woman who has had her tongue cut out à la the ill-fated Lavinia of Shakespeare’s horrific Titus Andronicus.

Were Aveyard a more experienced novelist, she may have realised that she has crammed too many themes into 350-plus pages. As a result the novel is neither a children’s bildungsroman nor a coming-of-age text. Rather, it is a novel that itself appears to be suffering from growing pains. As an introduction to themes such as terrorism, power tensions, and oppression it fails miserably simply because it tries to do too much too fast. However, in terms of sheer narrative machinations it never flags from start to finish, and would lend itself smoothly to becoming a blockbuster box-office screenplay.

Teenage readers may not question Aveyard’s work much, which might prove to be a blessing for parents. An adult reviewer, such as myself, however, has no choice but to contemplate whether she wants her 14-year old daughter to be dipping into Red Queen. As in the case of Pretty Little Liars and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the book is best left on the shelf for a while, perhaps until my daughter earns the right to vote, hopefully for a less crazed and dystopian regime than that portrayed in Aveyard’s bouncy but somewhat overrated debut.

Red Queen

(YOUNG ADULT)

By Victoria Aveyard

HarperTeen, US

ISBN 978-0062310637

400pp.