Golden
Son by Pierce Brown
So I just
finished reading Golden Son. What can I say about this read… it was dark,
gritty, impactful, heartbreaking, gorydamn amazing. (Yeah, I think I like that
last one the best.)
Golden
Son is the second installment of the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown. If you
haven’t read Red Rising, go do it. In
this book we leave the surface of Mars and the brutal training play yard of the
Golden children and head intergalactic. There’s a touch a space opera, other-worldly
technological advances, new adult angst, power struggles, slaughter, violence and
death-the list goes on and on and on. We watch Darrow lose his focus and find
it again, lose his friends and find them again, lose his family and find them
again, but best of all we watch Darrow lose himself and find himself again.
In a
booklovers universe that’s filled with YA giants like The Hunger Games, Harry
Potter, Ender’s Game etc, Brown’s titles are a step in another direction. This
author doesn’t need comparison to others in his genre because he does something
that these other books don’t, he stabs you in the gut with a slingBlade made of
fire, rips you to the sternum, lances your heart and then does it all over
again without apology, without the assistance of a Carver to sew your soul back
up. His writing is unique and consuming, his characters over the top but still captivating.
The world he’s created… tremendous. There are Reds, Golds, Yellows, Pinks, factions
residing over factions in an intricately designed world cross-stitched with Greek mythology. And don’t blink while
you’re reading this, you might miss the deception, the thrill, the passion, and
it’s all going to slap in you in the face at the end, leaving you wondering
what the hell just happened, because it’s all pure awesomeness.
