Iron Gold

Executive Summary: This book pissed me off. A lot. I'm not sure if it deserves the 4 stars I gave it or 2 stars. I suspect the author's intention was to piss me off though so my 4 star rating stands. For now.Audiobook: I love Tim Gerard Reynolds. I'm not really sure why they felt it necessary to hire 3 other narrators for the other POVs in this book. His chapters were the best. I don't know which reader did the others, but the guy who read for Lysander was far too quiet, especially in the early chapters. His volume got better as the book went on, but it was still a struggle.The reader for Lyria was the best after Mr. Reynolds. Having a female reader for a female POV at least makes sense to me and she did a good job. I'm not sure if she was doing an Irish accent or if that's just her normal reading voice, but she had good inflections and did a few other voices as well.I thought the narrator for Effron was also good/fine, but didn't feel like he added so much that it couldn't have just been narrated by Mr. Reynolds.Full ReviewMy understanding is/was that the first trilogy was considered YA. I sure hope this one isn't. It's incredibly dark. That isn't to say the last trilogy wasn't dark, but even for me I struggled at times with the book.I didn't come into this with the expectation of sunshine and puppies, but just when things seemed to be going bad, they got worse. Then worse still. I also struggled a lot with the new characters. I don't much care for Lysander and I came to pretty much despise Ephron by the middle of the book. I think I felt more sorry for Lyria than I did like her as a character.Then there is Darrow. He spent the entirety of this book pissing me me in a way he hasn't since [b:Red Rising 15839976 Red Rising (Red Rising, #1) Pierce Brown https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1461354651s/15839976.jpg 21580644].There wasn't much in the way of new world building from what we already got in the previous trilogy. This was very much a character-driven book. Normally this is something I like a lot, but in this case all the characters made me angry.I'm sure this review makes it sound like I hated this book, but the reality is I found it hard to put down. Maybe I'm as much of a sadist as Mr. Brown seems to be. It could just be that he did such a good job evoking such strong reactions from me about fictional characters. I'd like to hope it's the latter.With the last trilogy I recall having similar issues with the first book and liking books 2 and 3 far more. I'm hoping that happens with this trilogy as well.