Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Golden Son

I’m screwed… I already rated the first book in the series 5 stars… After reading Golden Son I think I’m going to need more stars. This book truly captured my heart and broke it in two.

Unlike the first novel in the series (Red Rising) which focused on a Hunger Games inspired battle arena this novel expands into a galactic civil war. If you enjoyed Enders Game but would have liked more violence this is for you. Not to mention the amount of twist and turns you will never see coming is chefs kiss.

Pierce Brown does well to make even the characters who are evil seem compassionate. In return he also makes the characters you believe to be good grotesquely dark and twisted. In this book you’ll never know who is going to stab Darrow in the back or be his saviour.

But… at least you can always put your faith in Darrow & Servo. Darrow is a man born Red & made Gold but Servo… Servo is a man of two colours. If anything bad happens to Servo in this series I will throw a fit.

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laguerrelewis's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

All your favorite (surviving) characters from the last book + a few new faces move to battle in space with this installment. The political intricacies, violence, and undercurrent of revolution are all still present in mostly the same ways, but now instead of the Institute, Darrow and his allies have entered the actual society. While there was a lot that I liked that carried over, there was also a lot that I didn’t like. The writing style of these books makes it hard for me to truly get into them. Pretentiousness with little substance, undercutting the few moments where it’s actually fitting. I especially don’t like how women are discussed—this book is incredibly horny, which is distracting, off-putting, and hurts the female characters. If you can get past all that the action is great, the build is pretty engaging, and this book at least meets the level of its predecessor.

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heyjaycee's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

A couple of years after the events of Red Rising, Darrow is embedded deep in his campaign to infiltrate Gold society and rise to the top so he can destroy it from within. Out of the Academy, there's bigger and badder foes to deal with, and consequences are more dire. Darrow must navigate politics and war to come out of the turmoil in a position of ultimate power if he's to turn the Golds against themselves, fracture society, and liberate the lowColours.

I mean, wow. Golden Son went hard. If I thought Red Rising was brutal, then damn, my eyes have been opened. Golden Son is the story of Darrow figuring out how to trust anyone when he's living a deadly lie, and how important trust in his Gold fellows is when he's putting his life on the line in the gambit of civil war.

Is this too vague? I honestly don't know how to talk about this book, and not just because everything is such a spoiler. So. Much. Happens! Twists and turns all over the place. Absolutely gripping, and very dark.

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