Not since I first read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix back in 2003 have I encountered a book to so effectively emulate the experience of riding a rollercoaster. Except, instead of sharp drops in gravity and terrifying falls while barely secured to open seats of plastic and metal messing with your innate human fear of heights and your body’s sense of the space-time continuum, it’s just the words and your imagination making your emotions go all whoopity fuck over the place. Golden Son takes the foundation laid in Red Rising and escalates.
Just, escalation everywhere. The whole book is escalators.
It’s too hard for me to talk about what happens in this book in detail. There’s too much to talk about. Instead I’m going to say some vague things that you may apply how you wish.
This book has people shooting out of spaceships as an invasion tactic.
Darrow is being crushed by the weight of his secret life, and the thin line he is forced to walk on a daily basis as he balances his revolutionary tactics with his life as a Gold and his personal relationships.
There is an OH SHIT moment practically every ten pages.
There are almost as many betrayals in this book as there are escalators.
Just when you think the book can’t surprise you anymore, it surprises you seven more times.
There is love and friendship and hatred and vengeance and complicated loyalties.
It explores the way people’s upbrining shapes their opinions about life, and the ways people interact with each other.
Everything is gray, there are no black and whites.
Sevro is amazing.
Everything, all the madness, is held together by a central concern once you step back and take a look at the book as a whole.
The ending pissed me off, almost to the point of hating the book, but not quite.
The book is so good I didn’t even care it was written (sometimes over-written) in first person present tense, which is a POV that can go fuck itself.
This is not YA. It’s adult. Very very adult, and impossible to classify in one genre.
It will make an excellent series of movies, if done right.
I have no idea what’s going to happen next but I’m totally all in.
[4.5 stars]
I bought Red Rising in an e-book sale a while back, and all the glowing reviews of the series makes it very clear I need to read both books. When is book 3 out, though? I HATE having to wait for the concluding volume in a series – should I just wait until all three are out?
Apparently book three comes out this time next year. (No, I’m not stalking these books and planning my attack strategy based on Scoots and Alexis’s reviews, why ever would you ask?)
I think I might read Red Rising later this summer, Golden Son in the fall and then book three upon its arrival. This sounds like a sane plan, right?
@Malin: Yes, you should probably wait. You will get maximum enjoyment if you do. Or, you could do like faintingviolet and read them relatively close together so they’re still fresh.
@faintingviolet: Sounds like a good plan! That way you will still get some time to dwell with the characters before book three. That’s what I always miss when I binge-read new series.
I think everyone I’ve ever met is getting pretty sick and tired of me talking about these two books. But I can’t stop.
I guess I’ll just go out and meet some new friends to tell.
#teamsevro
Have you reached the point in your proselytyzing where you offer to do something they want if they will just, for the love of god, read your books?
I have a friend who STILL hasn’t read Harry Potter even though I have begged her, quite literally, on several occasions. I definitely reached the bargaining stage with her.
“It’s just the words and your imagination making your emotions go all whoopity fuck over the place.”
The author should make this the book’s tagline immediately as it is both true and brilliant.
I love this book almost as much as I love Sevro (je adore).
I also have mixed feelings about the ending. It was like walking off a cliff – you could see it coming (there was scads of foreshadowing) and it would take minimal effort to avoid it, and yet there it was and off he went. It didn’t change my enjoyment of the book, in fact it may have elevated it slightly. It’s like the end of Dangerous Liaisons – it hurts so good. I’m hoping that what happens at the end here has far reaching repercussions for Darrow in the next book. What does it mean for him as a person now that THIS has happened?
Yeah, that ending. I didn’t see the specifics coming, but the SOMETHING AWFUL was heavily telegraphed. I definitely think Pierce Brown isn’t afraid to shake up the status quo, and that’s exciting, even if I also feel sort of betrayed by him. It’s a fine line.