This book is about a girl named Mare who is a red. Red's are people who have red blood and silvers are people who have issues with emotional expression. Silvers are at the top of society while Reds are at the bottom. Silvers have mutant powers which makes them very very dangerous. Which makes me question why they're so sad all the time because if I had superpowers I would be having so so much fun. 
 Mare finds out that she is special even though she's a red and then she probably falls in love but I didn't get that far because I can't take it. 
 These are the reasons why I can't finish this book. One: The world that this book is set in is poorly constructed. Some decisions that have shaped the world make no sense. For example, the silvers decide to build arenas all across the country. To me this is a strange thing to decide to build. Was this the only good ideas that they thought would flourish? What about a different organized sport? Why an arena? I just don't understand. The justification for building arenas was that raids used to be executed for trivial things and silvers find that to be exciting so they decided to just make arenas. That seems really bizarre to me. The fight that they described was extremely unbalanced and seemed to be very boring. In fact the protagonist mentions how boring it is for both her and for the silvers themselves. 
 Another thing that I found strange was that apparently the arenas cause reds to have a lower crime rate. How so? That makes absolutely no sense! I suppose it's because only silvers are allowed to fight, and so it's entertaining to see all their superpowers. But I don't see how that stops crime, especially when the protagonist is a criminal, a thief, and finds the fights boring. There are quite a few contradictions in the story and some of them are caused by the simplistic way in which the book was written. 
 Two: The protagonist is the second densest dumbest girl so far that I've read. And I've read of couple of bad protagonist before. She notices things and then on the following page promptly forgets them. She's fearful of authority one moment, and the next moment she's bad mouthing people who can kill her with one touch. It's like her sense of self-preservation is severely broken. She does this to both reds and silvers and it is quite irritating! 
 Example: she is speaking with a girl whom she wants to transport her and her friend across the state border so that they can escape conscription. However when the girl tells her that she doesn't know anything Mare actually snaps at her even though she's at her mercy and she really doesn't know the details of the trip. She reacted as if she had just done a good thing following that outburst. 
 Later on, we see the protagonist actually snap at the king and the queen where she had been fearful of them just a couple pages before. This is the same king she said could burst people into flames just by thinking it. Where is the sense of danger or fear? 
 Three: The two main characters are acting like stereo typical young adult fiction fodder. I can smell the instant love brewing already. This boy named Cal saved her from poverty, and yet she yells at him and blames her brand-new digs at the castle on him in a negative way. But he keeps looking at her and blushing, and turning away and acting bashful and bothered and just generally emo. It is just like all the other Insta loves that I've read in the past, and I don't want to be any part of it this time. It's so irritating to see a protagonist yell at someone for no particular good reason. Her mood swings have ruined the narrative for me.