Reviews

Iron Gold by Pierce Brown

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emstutz's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

In a different context this could be a 5-star read, but I think some of the things that made the original Red Rising trilogy so damn good are a little weaker in this book. For me, what really set Red Rising (particularly Golden Son and Morning Star) apart as a series was the relentless pacing. From the first page, each book moved at a breakneck pace that did not let up until the end. Iron Gold is a slower read -- not a slow read by any means, but the pacing doesn't quite keep up with the previous novels. This isn't really a critique -- in fact, it makes a lot of sense that the characters have slowed down a little in the decade between books 3 and 4, but it is a little disappointing given that the speed was one of the real bright spots of the original trilogy.

My other issue, if you can call it that, is that this book is the first to have multiple POVs. There are four. Darrow, one character who played a miniscule role in the original trilogy, and two brand new characters. It's a little annoying that roughly three quarters of the fourth book in the series is spent in the POV of characters who I feel little to no connection with, and early on I found myself just kind of wading through the non-Darrow chapters to get back to Darrow's story. That being said, by the end of the book I cared quite a bit about three of the four POV characters, so I don't think this'll be an issue for me in Dark Age.

All in all, a really fun book that did not quite live up to the previous two, but did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for the series.