Brown has mastered the art of whiplash plotting. Just when you think things are going swell in some direction, he introduces some kind of foil to force the plot into a new direction. It's certainly a style that sets his writing apart from the norm, but it's not something I really enjoy reading. It's plottus interruptus writ large. 
 If you absolutely loved volume 1 of Red Rising and thought the roller coaster ride was the best thing ever, you're going to love volume 2. If you thought the sudden plot-jerk-reorientation was a mildly interesting gimmick and were willing to go along with it for the space of a book until the hero found his footing, you might be deeply annoyed by book 2 because it's all the same stuff over again, but even more so. Crank the dial to 11, baby. 
 Everything feels like a repeat of book one, including the overly perfect super-super talented hero who is loved unconditionally until he's not. While I admit there are many things in this book worth appreciating, including the need to compromise and work with unpleasant parties that you would normally prefer not to, the violence, the lack of any thread resolution (what's the opposite of resolution? thread trauma? that's what this book offers), and the cardboard characters with their unfathomable motivations felt more like scraping off a scab than entertainment. 
 As with book one, no one but the hero gets to do anything except support or oppose the hero. There is one secondary character, my favorite in book one, who has a life-changing reveal towards the end of book 2, and who's entire reaction to said reveal is "okay, whatever, cool" (more or less). The author couldn't even spare a few paragraphs in a book with plenty of pages to allow the secondary character to move beyond "I am so loyal to you, my lord and master" and have his own inner life, with his own world completely cracked. 
 When you get to the point in a book where you just wish the protagonist would be put to death already, it's probably time to move onto a new series. I gave book one three stars, the "I liked it" review. I felt it had something fresh to offer in the "peasant becomes a pretty pretty princess" genre that this follow-up didn't have. Didn't like it. I'm out.