I really wish I was able to tell you that I loved this book. That it was as good as the first two entries in its trilogy, Red Rising and Golden Son. I wish I was going to sit here and tell you to run out and read this RIGHT NOW, to put everything else aside, and to get lost in the world of Reaper and Sevro for a while. But I’m not able to do that. Sorry.
Yes, you should definitely read this if you read and loved the first two.
But.
There’s just something missing from this one that was alive and vibrant in the other two.
Maybe it was all of the battle details. Tidbits about ships and brigs and defending the bridge, that were painstakingly researched, and maybe just explained to great a detail. (translation: THEY WERE BORING).
Maybe it was all of the Roman lingo that I simply just couldn’t keep track of. I kept flipping to the cast of characters and to the map at the beginning, hoping that there was another page that maybe I had missed. One that might explain just what in the hell was going on in parts of this book. Was the problem due to the fact that I had read each of these books when they came out, and that I had simply forgotten huge chunks of important names, places, and facts? Or was it that there were simply TOO MANY names, places, and facts to remember?
Maybe it was the fact that Pierce Brown is now a bit of a superstar in the book world and doesn’t have anybody around him telling him NO. Seriously, there is actually a scene in this book where a Gold named Felicia is brutally murdered, and in response, Darrow says, “Bye, Felicia.” COMMENCE EYE ROLLING.
Maybe it was just the underlying feeling of dread that any character that you may have any attachment to could be killed for no reason at any time. Like a Joss Whedon movie, this gets exhausting after a time. I only have so many fucks to give.
But I think what it mostly was is that I got tired of Reaper telling me things instead of showing AND PROVING things to me. The first two books were so filled with Reaper and his friends DOING things, that all of the talking in this last book simply pissed me off.
But yes, you should read it. Because Pierce Brown really is a superstar. And he can write. Some of the new characters were exciting and fun to read about. Some of the new locations (the ice land of the Valkyries) were just amazing to imagine. And there were passages that really just blew me away with their beauty.
They call me the Morning Star. That star by which griffin-riders and travelers navigate the wastes in the dark months of winter. The last star that disappears when daylight returns in the spring.
That’s kind of nice, in the middle of all of the ugly parts. And there are plenty of songs, poems, and speeches just as lovely. Like Darrow’s speech to his army before a huge battle:
In mine, in space, in city and sky, we have lived our lives in fear. Fear of death. Fear of pain. Today, fear only that we fail. We cannot. We stand upon the edge of darkness holding the lone torch left to man. That torch will not go out. Not while I draw breath. Not while your hearts beat in your chests. Not while our ships yet have menace in them. Let others dream. Let others sing. We chosen few are the fire of our people…We are not Red, not Blue or Gold or Gray or Obsidian. We are humanity. We are the tide. And today we reclaim the lives that have been stolen from us. We build the future we were promised…Guard your hearts. Guard your friends. Follow me through this evil night, and I promise you morning waits on the other side. Until then, break the chains!
Hell, I’d follow him in to battle after a St. Crispin’s day speech like that.
I’ve read that Brown is putting together another trilogy about the same world. I’ll definitely read it, but am grateful for a rest. I hope the books are about Sevro, maybe years in the future, training a bunch of his kids to become Howlers. I’d read those books.
“Was the problem due to the fact that I had read each of these books when they came out, and that I had simply forgotten huge chunks of important names, places, and facts? Or was it that there were simply TOO MANY names, places, and facts to remember?”
I am worried about both of these things.
I really appreciate his dedication to research and details, but this was a bit overwhelming.
Funny, but it doesn’t bother me as much when I read the Stephen King Dark Tower books — I even have two companion books filled with details and facts that help understand the plot. Mine are highlighted and bookmarked all over the place.
But this was just harder.
I had that problems (both of them) when reading Golden Son. I’m not really having them as much with Morning Star, but I just read book two less than two months ago so things are still fresh. But there are certainly characters who show up on the page and I’m all “who?”
This book clocks in at over 500 pages hardcover and has the same amount of plot that other authors would put in three books. It’s a behemoth, but one I’m enjoying possibly because I’m getting used to it.
I really wonder what my opinion would have been if I had read these much closer together. It’s so hard to remember tiny bits of what happened at the Institute, and these events are brought up constantly!
It’s funny — the more hours that pass since finishing the more respect I have for the trilogy as a whole. I still didn’t love this book, but when you look at the work as one entity, it really was remarkable.
Have waited to read your review until I finished the book myself. I am incredibly glad that I waited until Morning Star was about to come out to start the trilogy, because you’re right, there’s a huge cast of characters and it can get really difficult to keep track of everyone and the intricacies of battle and twists and people changing sides back and forth all over the place. With each book in the trilogy, I needed a breather before starting the next one, because they really do exhaust me. I really really liked the book, but I didn’t love it (as with the other two books there were enough things that jarred for me to give it a full five stars).
I absolutely agree that some of the prolonged warfare bits got a bit tedious – but it really helped to have read them so close together. And the book sure was an emotional roller-coaster and I was really impressed with how much the story and develops and expands over the course of the trilogy and the characters and relationships grow and change.
See, Winter, this is how a successful rebellion is actually carried out. This is how you finish off a story. While Meyer and Brown are vastly different writers, this left me satisfied in a way that the final book in the Lunar Chronicles just didn’t.
Ack, Winter. SO disappointing.
So much better than Winter. I may never recover from that one.
I think (one of) the major problem I had with Winter was its determination to give everyone a happy ending.
While in Morning Star, those left standing at the end seem to get a happy-ish ending, the future is much more vague, and slightly unbelievable. I can’t imagine more than a year or two is going to pass before the next Reaper comes forth to revolt.
I thought the very tenuous hold they all had on peace and how much work they still had left to do to rebuild a new society was very much acknowledged at the end of Morning Star. It was very much not a “and they all lived happily ever after”, it was a “and now we have a long and difficult road ahead to try to make a better future the coming generations”. The fact that their victory came with huge casualties with long-term repercussions and at great cost felt realistic to me.
I’m probably about a quarter of the way into this and feel the same way about both the names and the war details, but I’ll be damned if Sevro isn’t just the best character ever. God, I love him. I read Golden Son back in November or December I think, so it hasn’t been too long but it definitely left me foggy on some stuff.
Love Sevro so much. When he combed his hair to look nice, I was smiling and saying “awwww” to myself.
Morning Star gave me a case of the sads not because it was terrible, but because it was underwhelming. Darrow is an indomitable force of brilliant fury, who here is turned into a guy who wins because aw shucks guys friends are the best. Huge things happen to him (talking about the box obvs) that have no future repercussion. Mustang barely has 3 sentences in the book, leaving their big resolution at the end feeling empty. Same for the Jackal, an excellent villain wasted. In fact the whole ending lacked resonance and the more I think on it the more implausible their finishing strategy is.
There are moments here and there but the whole does not work. In the afterward the author mentions his struggle in finding his final book here and it shows.
(None of this applies to you Sevro, I still love you for always.)
I get emails everyday from various pop culture t-shirt sites. Why am I not seeing billions of Sevro shirts to buy? I would buy all of them.
Sevro is such a great character and provided pretty much the only laughs in the book. He’s such a force of nature.
Alexis, I think we reacted very differently to this book. I think it’s problematic that we didn’t see more PTSD after Darrow’s incarceration (although I have a theory that once all the immediate fighting is over and he has time to break down, he will in a major way – it’s just we don’t get to see that part), and I agree that the Jackal was wasted as a villain, but I think you are wrong about Mustang. She really had a lot of reasons to keep her own counsel and if this were a multiple POV book, rather than a first person from Darrow’s POV, I suspect she’d be a lot more prominent.
I really think that is the major weakness of the single POV… if a character has reason NOT to speak to that person, we are prevented from seeing their story. I had the same issue with Katniss in The Hunger Games. There were so many times I wished that Brown had incorporated other POVs over the course of his three books.
This is a great point. I would have loved a chapter or two from Victra’s POV.
Victra was the one who said “Bye, Felicia”. And it was bloodydamn awesome, tbh.
It wasn’t Darrow that said, “Bye Felicia,” it was Victre. I’ve got to say that I disagree with a lot of your review. It’s like we read different books.
And that’s one of the great thing about being a part of a community like this — seeing how people can react differently to stories and writers. That’s where some of our best discussions are born.
As a whole, I loved this trilogy and am glad to know that others loved it too.