I’m starting to think that Pierce Brown should maybe have left well-enough alone with his Red Rising “trilogy”. I also can’t help but notice that his name is gaining more and more prominence on the covers as the series progresses. Not saying that’s bad, just something to keep an eye on.
But seriously, was there always this much war in these books? I very quickly did not look forward to reading this, and I love this series. I am a huge advocate of Red Rising and I’m about to start telling folks to stop after book 3. At this point, it’s just exhausting.
I still haven’t done my series reread so I felt like I was learning who a lot of these players were as I went. I’d even largely forgotten what happened in Iron Gold but I’d caught on by the end. Everything just feels brutal, for hundreds and hundreds of pages, really gruesome descriptions that never let up. There’s nothing enjoyable about reading this one, there’s just finishing it.
Dark Age comes right on the heels of Iron Gold, with Darrow fighting the war for Mercury and Lysander fighting the war for Mercury and Ephraim fighting with the Obsidians on wherever they are and Mustang fighting for control of the Senate on the Moon and Lyria finally showing up halfway through to keep on fighting. I can only read so many descriptions of giants being eagled, you know? And not fun Scrubs eagled either.
This is probably book 2 in a second trilogy but I’m genuinely not sure if I’m going to read book 3.