Golden Son
We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind – how we live, how we go, and how we stand before we fall.
Pierce Brown, Golden Son
Apparently this year is going to start off with books that I didn’t expect to read and enjoy. Similar to the last review on Heir of Fire where I was surprised that the book suddenly got so much better than the previous books in the series, I didn’t actually like the first book in this series, Red Rising, as much as I liked this one – Golden Son. It was ok, but nowhere near what I was expecting after my best friend told me it was one of her favorite series ever and seeing the rave reviews. But Golden Son was a solid 4 out of 5 stars for me.
It felt like Red Rising was a lot of set up, and it really only focused on a single character – Darrow. The world was interesting, combining the concepts of an extreme hierarchical society and the science fiction of living on other planets and serious technological jumps forward. Unfortunately, as heart-breaking and rich as the set up was, the rest of the book felt dishearteningly uneventful. Golden Son, though, was full of action and started to really draw a more complex world and introduce the revolution in full.
The series follows Darrow, who was born into a society where the “color” you were born into defines your role within the universe. As a Red, his life is filled with mining and labor, and he is considered one of the lowest classes. The ruling class is the Golds. Through a series of circumstances, which I’ll skip in case you haven’t read Red Rising yet, he finds himself leading a revolution from the inside of the Gold society.
We finally get to see some real depth from some of the characters who aren’t Darrow. One of the things I can’t stand in a book is having a main character – no matter how good they are – who is the only character that you get to know or the only one who has any good in them at all. Relationships and emotion are almost always linked to our interactions with others. I was so happy to see that in Golden Son, some of the characters that were introduced before finally got some nuances to them and truly became part of the story. And perhaps one of my favorite things is that all of the characters, including Darrow, are so much more complex than they initially appear. It kept me on my toes and wanting to know more.
The other thing that finally happened was some ACTION. For a series about a revolution, the first book was disappointing in its action. There is some, but because it was set up as training, it felt like it wasn’t really moving the story forward or the revolution towards a reality. Golden son includes some political intrigue and some well-written sabotage and battles.
After reading this one, I can finally understand all of the hype. The writing is very well done, it’s descriptive and almost lyrical. Pierce Brown doesn’t back down from the hard issues, and the complexity of the book combined with the fantastical world he has built doesn’t disappoint. I will say that the book broke my heart over and over and over again. I’m kind of a glutton for punishment in my reading sometimes. But I also know that it means I was fully engaged.
I’m now very impatient to read Morning Star!
Nuggets of Gold in Golden Son by Pierce Brown
- You meet a man, you know him. You meet a woman, she knows you.
- Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.
- We are not our station in life. We are us – the sum of what we’ve done, what we want to do, and the people who we keep close.
- Wise men read books about history. Strong men write them.
- We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind – how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.