Golden Son

8/10

3.5/5.

I'm conflicted on this series. On the one hand, the worldbuilding and a reliance on the science opera genre are this book's strengths, and some secondary characters stand out in the bloated cast listed at the start of the story. I'll say it's an improvement over its predecessor, as it feels like its own story instead of pulling heavily from what we've seen before.

On the other hand, the book still suffers from a few pitfalls that the first book had. The writing has gotten better, but it has its weak moments still. Darrow, while having an interesting backstory, does not offer the story much in terms of characterization. His motivations are clear but rigid, and the challenges he faces are nonexistent. Most of the obstacles in the book are resolved within a chapter or the next few pages, and then we're on to the next one. With this structure, the story feels disjointed as it's ushering us to the climax, which fizzes out as soon as we reach it.

I really do like the overall concept of the series, but it's taken me so long to get through this one. It had a good start, but sort of lost steam toward part two. Part of me wants to read Morning Star just to see how the story wraps up, and even if I do, I doubt I'd pick up the second ongoing trilogy. Then again, there's a part of me that wants to end my journey here. I hate leaving things unresolved. Here's hoping that it actually does get resolved in the last book?

I liked this better than the first one. Think it was easier to dive into after knowing the “world” and characters, etc. Ending hooked me & excited to read the next book in the series. 4.5

Darrow has infiltrated the Gold ranks. But the Sons of Ares have failed to contact him. Now he must fight to stay on top, as he tries to continue his mission of breaking the chains alone. He is forever being cut down by Augustus' advisors. Golds who are envious of his skills. Darrow has to keep his wits as sharp as his razor if he is going to survive the politics of this world. As he fights to stay distant from the Golds he calls friends, the double life will begin to wear him down. Mistakes will be made and as Darrow sparks a war among the Golds, he will learn that friends can quickly become enemies.

After being amazed by the first book, this one was disappointing. It was a build up book. The entire book was a giant war and the same things happened throughout the entire thing. Golds switched alliances to whoever looked more powerful, ships blew up, councils debated tactics and loads of people died. But really...the entire book? I honestly started skim reading because the dialogue was so wordy and philosophical it bored me. I just wanted to make sure I kept a record of who died so I wouldn't be confused.

Before the war and the last chapter of the book were the only parts that actually hooked me. I struggled through hoping the same spark the first book had could be found. I understand the point of showing the politics of the world, but there was barely any balance in this book. Everything was politics, war and things going wrong. I like a lot of conflict in my books, but this was too much.

Maybe the next one will be better. I can only hope this build up book wasn't a waste of my time.

When you have all the money, power is the next thing.
Don't trust even your shadow.
Friends will be friends, until they are not friends anymore.
(almost) Everybody wants to rule over someone.
(almost) Everybody believes she is in possession of the absolute truth.
Et tu, Brute?
Love will find the way.
We all have an inner monster. Keep it well tied up.
That's all.

Excellent novel. Excellent!!.

Oh, my heart!

I feel like I've just been disgorged from a spitTube.

Roque...what the heck? What happened that made you turn? For all Roque's betrayal, Sevro is the epitome of loyalty. I think he's officially my fave. And he and his Howlers take the prize for Best Entrance Ever when they arrive to liberate Darrow from the Sovereign.

“Sevro has come, and he's brought friends.” Best. Entrance. Ever.

The action in the second book is really ramped up and so fast paced, at times it toes the line of being too much, but yet one cannot stop reading. I have to know what's going to happen next. Thankfully though, Darrow slowed down just long enough to open his heart to Mustang. Here's hoping she doesn't stomp all over it now that she knows the truth.

I'm committed to keep soldiering on so I can catch up to Dark Age in the next week, but man ... you're killin me, Pierce Brown!

This is a fucking masterpiece.
And I don't know how to deal with this right now.
This ending.
This God damn ending.
It broke me.

Holy shiiiiiiit.
Well that was a ride, wasn't it?
It made me flinch, made my stomach turn, my heart beat faster, made me shut my eyes, made me ache in pain and hurt...
amazing writing, great twists, a rollercoaster. I'll be cracking on with Morning Star now, I can't not know what's going to happen.

It took me awhile to get into this book but once I did, I couldn't stop reading. I am a stunned mullet - I can't believe the story ended that way! I really need to get the next book out asap to find out what happens to Darrow.

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Son-Red-Rising-Book-ebook/product-reviews/B00I765ZEU/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_srvw_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&sortBy=recent#R3PVP2MHLCGW0U

Golden Son by Pierce Brown

I loved the first installment of the Red Rising trilogy as a faithful recreation of a 1940s cheesy-pulp Space Opera. The story was an exciting, fast-paced Bildungsroman as Darrow, a Red youth, was transformed into a Gold superman. In this future, society is stratified into color-coded occupations with Gold at the top and Reds at the bottom. Darrow is run through the survival of the fittest experience of the Institution where Gold youth murder, betray, enslave, and rape each other to win. The first installment had a lot in common with a lot of YA dystopian novels.

This book takes a step into space. Darrow is a lancer of House Augustus and he experiences failures. He is outsmarted and out-politicked by the tigers who make up society (and the Society with a capital “S.”) Facing total disaster, he starts to fight back, but while he is winning the game, he is moving away from old friends.

The pace of this book is fast. The action is in the edge of seat category. Fighting and action threads its way through this book. I thought that Brown's description of a space battle was intoxicating. That description involves an “Iron Rain” where millions of men are individually dropped to landing sites while limpet ships thread their way past “Ripwing” fighters to attach themselves to capital ships where boarding parties hope to drill their way into the ship for hand to hand fighting.

I listened to this as a book on tape and the description of the space battle captured my imagination in way that seldom happens:

“Fire and lightning rule space. Behemoths of metal belch missiles back and forth, silently pounding one another with all the weapons of man. The silence of it, so eerie, so strange. Great veils of flak explode around the ships, cloaking them in fury, almost like raw cotton tossed into the wind. RipWings and wasps buzz at one another, pissing streams of gunfire. They nip and slice at carapaces of metal, fighting in a dense giant cloud. In little packs they slip from their chaotic fights, spiraling silently toward clusters of leechCraft as the destroyers and carriers launch their troop transports across space in undulating waves. It's a game of boarding parties. Over, under, and through the curtains of flak the leeches go, seeking a hull to clamber onto so they can pump their deadly cargo into the belly of crucial ships, like flies dropping larvae into open wounds. All flown by Blues raised to do only this one thing. Bellona craft pass those of Augustus, waves overlapping, breaking on one another.

All in silence.”

Another feature I liked was near the end where we started getting some of the philosophy that undergirds the soicty that is the strange, mutated descendant of our own. Nero au Augustus explains his motivations as follows:

“He nods as if I've proven his point. “And that is why I exist. I know that Blues can command fleets. I know Obsidians can use technology, lead men. That the quickest Orange could, if given a proper chance, be a fine pilot. Reds could be soldiers, or musicians, or accountants. Some few—very few—Silvers could write novels, I wager. But I know what it would cost us. Order is paramount to our survival.

“Humanity came out of hell, Darrow. Gold did not rise out of chance. We rose out of necessity. Out of chaos, born from a species that devoured its planet instead of investing in the future. Pleasure over all, damn the consequences. The brightest minds enslaved to an economy that demanded toys instead of space exploration or technologies that could revolutionize our race. They created robots, neutering the work ethic of mankind, creating generations of entitled locusts. Countries hoarded their resources, suspicious of one another. There grew to be twenty different factions with nuclear weapons. Twenty—each ruled by greed or zealotry.

“So when we conquered mankind, it wasn't for greed. It wasn't for glory. It was to save our race. It was to still the chaos, to create order, to sharpen mankind to one purpose—ensuring our future. The Colors are the spine of that aim. Allow the hierarchies to shift and the order begins to crumble. Mankind will not aspire to be great. Men will aspire to be great.”

Earlier in the book, there was a casual mentioning of the nuking of the English Isles. Put that in the context of this speech, and you can see something underlying what would otherwise be merely another showpiece dystopia.

There were features in the book, I didn't like. Darrow has a tendency to lapse into mordant self-abnegation where he blames himself for the deaths of friends. These moments are turned on and off for effect. Likewise, he has the magical ability to inspire loyalty at the drop of a hat, but this last trait is more than offset by the betrayals he experiences in this book.

This is the tent line between the first and last books. This book follows a chiastic structure: the low rise and high fall. This is not surprising for a trilogy that is called “Red Rising.” Darrow's story is obviously one of Darrow going from the lowest of the low to the pinnacle of society.

This book follows the structure, but in this book, Darrow starts high and falls.

We see, therefore, that Darrow is not a Mary Sue character. Bad things happen to him. He has had a lot of lucky breaks, but there will come a time when luck and determination depart, and the hero is facing disaster, otherwise, things are too easy.

This is the book that tells that part of the epic.

I look forward to seeing the rest of that story.

Incredibly visceral and intense ; Darrow is such a wonderful, conflicted, complicated mess and this second installment of the Red Rising trilogy is full of twists, betrayals and battles, love, hate, agony and joy. It is an excellent read.

Sekarang, setelah lulus dari sekolah komando Emas dan memantapkan posisinya di tengah para musuh, Darrow melanjutkan misi rahasia untuk menghancurkan mereka dari dalam. Namun, memulai dan memenangkan peperangan yang akan mengubah takdir umat manusia menuntut harga yang sangat mahal. Dan Darrow terlambat menyadari bahwa permainan berbahaya ini jauh lebih mematikan daripada yang ia bayangkan.
Ending buku ini membuat hatiku hancur, seakan segala yang telah diperjuangkan baik Darrow maupun Putra Ares dari awal tiada arti. Begitu banyak momen mengharukan di buku 2 ini, jauh lebih banyak dari buku pertama. Endingnya yang menyesakkan itu sangat menggantung membuatku gemes & tidak sabar ingin membaca buku lanjutannya, padahal blm ada terjemahannya.

Another great installment of Darrow's adventures. Lots of plot twists that were relatively minor (aka - reasonably shocking to keep you on your feet, but not so outrageous that you'll want to flip a table).

Golden Son ends on a cliff-hanger unlike Red Rising, so I'm bummed I don't have the sequel already in hand!

Second reading through. Damn. DAMN. this is a very different vibe from the first, and reading them back to back truly emphasizes that.

Amazing. This book blew me away - so much better than the first.

Wow. That cliffhanger. I can't.

I want to review each book in this series if only to recommend them to more people but its hard not to gush without spoilers. This book continues the trends of the first. It is well paced and efficiently written. I blew through this book so fast and started the third that I forgot to mark it completed in goodreads before I finished the last book.

What a bloodydamn good book. My heart is broken and yet I love it so much. Cannot wait to start reading the next one.

D A R R O W, :???)

Middle book syndrome? I don't think so. Golden Son smashes that notion into smithereens in what is a stunningly told tale of intricacy and depth. Full of political intrigue, heart pounding action and moral questioning around the impact of war and revolution. How far would you or I be willing to go to break the chains of injustice? The plot writhes around like a snake in the throes of death, jerking your heart one way and tearing it back again in the opposite direction. Jaw dropping revelation after revelation leaves you breathless and begging for a break.

Friendships are shattered, betrayal is rife and you never quite know who to trust. What I do know is that my heart is fully allied to Darrow and his relentless pursuit to tear down the corrupt world around him. His striving towards justice and equality for everyone, not just those at the top, resonate so strongly with me as this same battle is sadly echoed in our own society. I palpably felt the weight of responsibility crushing Darrow as he is asked to make impossible choice after choice. What price will he and all those around him ultimately pay and will it be worth it?

The book saves the biggest, baddest, most gut wrenching bombshell right until the end. It's a perfect twist in the context of the story; an absolute jaw dropper that left me stunned and reeling. The twist wants you to hate it, it almost dares you to walk away from this world saying no I can't take this anymore, I've been through enough. But you see, it's cleverer than that. For after a brief period of wanting to run and protect yourself, something else happens. Your mind starts to turn to the next book and you realise that in fact the revelations demand you to continue. You have to see this to the end and not give up - just like Darrow. There's only one way to combat a twist like that and it's to dive straight into Morning Star and continue the fight. Bring it on!

Damn.
I started the series with hopes high above my head. Red Rising didn't give me the thrills I wanted. Yet, I liked the book.
So when I started Golden Son, I wasn't sure of what to expect.
But after a few chapters, I could't bloody damn leave the book alone.
It gave me thrills and excitement that was far beyond my expectation.
And the ending, damn. What a cliffhanger.
So glad I started the series after all the books are out.
What else is there to say, other than I am fucking in love with the characters and everything.

p.s. Be ready to start the Morning Star as soon as you finish this, or you are gonna have one long hangover.

This was a very good book but I got a bit tired of Darrow some way through. It just didn't seem genuine when he anguished over Eo and I found it kind of insulting when he'd think of her ALL the time while with Mustang. It was hard to connect to how he felt because to me...it just felt like he was playing a game.

I was happy to see Sevro and the Howlers back!

I don't even like this genre..? The whole epic fight scenes and swords and stuff don't appeal to me.. So why is this book so amazing?

I couldn't devour this story fast enough. What will Darrow do? It's a great second book in a series, and I must go get the third.

The story got even more interesting as the helldiver entered the world of the Golds.