Red Rising by Pierce Brown

In Pierce Brown’s debut novel, Red Rising, humanity lives in a strictly hierarchical society, with the various castes marked by colors: Golds at the top, Reds at the bottom, Pinks for pleasure, Yellows for bureaucrats, etc. Darrow, a young Red, who mines beneath the surface of Mars for Helium-3, has always accepted the hierarchy as it has been drummed into him, until events cause him to see things differently. Eventually, he is set on a path whereby he will seek to undermine the Golds’ power and spark a revolution of Reds. If, that is, he can stay true to himself and his mission even as he infiltrates the Gold society. Because of the many twists in the novel, that pretty much all I’m going to say about plot.

Usually I like to start with the positives of a novel. But despite the fact that I’m pretty sure Red Rising will end up in... Read More

Golden Son by Pierce Brown

There’s not a lot to say about the plot of Pierce Brown’s Golden Son, the sequel to the fantastic Red Rising, because outside of the density and complexity of the story, which would necessitate a lot of summary space, Brown fills the novel with so many twists, turns, backstabs and back-back stabs that it would be difficult to offer up a synopsis that both gives a true sense of what happens and does not at the same time give spoiler after spoiler. So let’s just say the plot is, well, dense and complex, is filled with twists and turns, and is almost entirely (but not quite entirely) a strength in the book. And we’ll move on to why it is an excellent follow-up that suffers not in the least from the dreaded second-book-of-a-trilogy syndrome.

The plot picks up two years after the close of Red Rising (btw, r... Read More

Morning Star by Pierce Brown

WARNING: Contains spoilers for book two, Golden Son.
Editor's note: This series continues with Iron Gold.

I was very excited to finally lay hands (or eyes) on Pierce Brown’s Morning Star. Picking up where book two, Golden Son, left off, Morning Star opens roughly a year after the Jackal storms into the celebration at Darrow’s Triumph, massacres Darrow’s supporters, and captures Darrow himself. While Ares has been killed, the rebellion and similarly-inspired uprisings are still alive and kicking, wreaking havoc across the solar system. But Octavia au Lune is now strengthening her power on Luna and Earth, and... Read More

Iron Gold by Pierce Brown

I was a big fan of Pierce Brown’s RED RISING trilogy, so I was thrilled to hear he was going to continue the story with a new trio of books. And I’m happy to report that the first book in that new series, Iron Gold (2018), delivers the goods.

[Fair Warning: there will be of necessity spoilers for the first three books, so if you haven’t read those (and you should) I strongly recommend going no further in this review.]

RED RISING at its stripped-down core was the typical Downtrodden Rebels Against a Tyrannical State (DRATS!) story, though executed with atypical flair and complexity. One of the complicating factors, and one of my favorite aspects of it was how the characters stru... Read More

Dark Age by Pierce Brown

Dark Age (2019) is Pierce Brown’s fifth installment in his Homeric-styled RED RISING space opera, and it comes pre-loaded with many of the set scenes fans have come to expect: major space battles, desperate fights against overwhelming odds, brutal deaths and torture scenes, labyrinthian scheming, verbal volleys nearly as nasty as the physical ones (though with less decapitation), great names, the slaughter of millions, painful introspection. It’s all here and all handled with the same effectively, skillfully bombastic style as the prior four novels in the series.

Which is both the strength and weakness of this latest episode. On the one hand, all of those story elements, combined with Brown’s stylistic gifts, are what have made this series so compulsively readable. On the other hand, for the v... Read More