Morning Star by Pierce Brown

 I finally splurged and bought myself a copy of Morning Star, the third book in the Red Rising Trilogy. Wow. Wow wow wow wow. Brown blew this one out of the atmosphere. There are scenes from Red Rising that I will always love, but Morning Star takes the cake in this trilogy. Amazing. Awesome. Couldn't have been better.  Now what do I do with my life? Enter book hangover.

5/5 stars








The Blurb:
Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society’s mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within.

Finally, the time has come.

But devotion to honor and hunger for vengeance run deep on both sides. Darrow and his comrades-in-arms face powerful enemies without scruple or mercy. Among them are some Darrow once considered friends. To win, Darrow will need to inspire those shackled in darkness to break their chains, unmake the world their cruel masters have built, and claim a destiny too long denied—and too glorious to surrender.

Review of Golden Son by Pierce Brown

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. 

Red Rising

There is violence in this book. Violence and heart, love and pain. People die terrible deaths. Painful deaths. The info dumping in the first quarter of the book was a bit overwhelming at first, but necessary. I mean, how else are you going to learn the rules of society on Mars? If you can get through that, it is well worth it. I wasn't expecting to find Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and a gorydamn pound of Greek Mythology woven into one. (I know, that's what all the reviews say, and they're right.) The prose is unique. Entertaining. And now I have to wait until 2015 to read the rest. Bums. I'll start re-reading now.