Blurb:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Red Rising hit the ground running and wasted no time becoming a sensation. Golden Son continues the stunning saga of Darrow, a rebel forged by tragedy, battling to lead his oppressed people to freedom.

As a Red, Darrow grew up working the mines deep beneath the surface of Mars, enduring backbreaking labor while dreaming of the better future he was building for his descendants. But the Society he faithfully served was built on lies. Darrow’s kind have been betrayed and denied by their elitist masters, the Golds—and their only path to liberation is revolution. And so Darrow sacrifices himself in the name of the greater good for which Eo, his true love and inspiration, laid down her own life. He becomes a Gold, infiltrating their privileged realm so that he can destroy it from within.
 
A lamb among wolves in a cruel world, Darrow finds friendship, respect, and even love—but also the wrath of powerful rivals. To wage and win the war that will change humankind’s destiny, Darrow must confront the treachery arrayed against him, overcome his all-too-human desire for retribution—and strive not for violent revolt but a hopeful rebirth. Though the road ahead is fraught with danger and deceit, Darrow must choose to follow Eo’s principles of love and justice to free his people.
 
He must live for more.

Review:

“Omnis vir lupus.”

Brown grapples you into a chokehold, not letting you gasp until the last bloodydamn page, leaving you staring wild-eyed at the heartbreaking carnage of Golden Son. Red Rising was a fantastic beginning to this epic series, but Golden Son was Brown saying to his readers, “You thought that was bloody good? Hold my beer.” Golden Son explodes the world from a contained, Hunger-Games-style story to a sprawling space war, waged across the solar system. Family rivalries are intensified and provide the brutal framework which gives this story depth and emotional impact. 

From the very first set of scenes, we find ourselves with a time jump of a year and Darrow is about to successfully decimate the competition in his newest series of training modules at the Academy, only to be devastatingly crushed by a manic branch of house Bellona. Darrow crashes from his heights on Mount Olympus into a urine filled hole of despair and dejection.

“Rise so high, in mud you lie.”

There are SO many epic moments as Darrow ruthlessly claws his way back into the good graces of the man who carelessly murdered his wife. He rises, he falls; he emerges, he sinks. The breakneck twists and turns, betrayals, and deplorable backstabbing kept me on my toes for the entire book. I was cheering—like literally putting the book down in my lap to celebrate the freaking epic-ness of certain scenes—and absolutely shocked at the audacity and depths to which Brown is willing to torture Darrow.

“Rise, goldenborn. Rise, ironmade. Rise, Man of Mars, and take with you my wrath.”

I want this review to remain spoiler free. However, there are a few quick scenes that I have to get off my chest. So if you haven’t read this book yet, skip the rest of this paragraph. First. Darrow jumping onto the table, kicking the wine into Cassius’ lap, revealing his secretly acquired razor skills from the freaking Rage Knight himself, and then casually dismembering Cassius with a backwards flick of his razor. Are you kidding?? I mean, we’re talking about, Honor-is-dead-but-I’ll-see-what-I-can-do levels of chills for me. But surely Brown couldn’t top a scene like that in the same book. Right? I don’t know, have YOU ever seen an Iron Rain? It is hard to put into words the otherworldly level of “epic” that Brown transcends as this elite strike force is shot through space into the battlefield. It’s like that moment in a movie when the charging force looks up and the sky has turned black because of the wave of arrows descending on them, except this is a squad of thousands of killing machines being shot through space, blotting out the sun as they crash into the battlefield, causing devastation and destruction. Again, one of those scenes where I just had to sit back and take an extra breath.  

Then, when all is said and done, I don’t know why but I was ready for a soft landing of an ending. How wrong I was, goodman. I will be honest, there are very, very few books that leave me speechless. Like, I have trouble thinking of more than a handful. But I finished Golden Son a few weeks before writing this review, and I still remember exactly where I was and how I felt while reading the last chapter of this book. I don’t know what I was expecting. But I had to stop, take a moment, and collect my thoughts. Truly a holy-crap-what-just-happened moment, and that just does NOT typically happen for me when I read. Golden Son simultaneously broke me and inspired me in the best of ways.

“Power is the crown that eats the head.”

Golden Son does something that is very difficult for a sequel to accomplish: it emerges as an even stronger, bloodier, risker, more entertaining book than its predecessor. Brown gives us a devastatingly powerful follow up to Red Rising that is propelling this series into a coveted spot among my favorite fantasy/sci-fi series of all time. 

As always:

“My pleasure, Good Reaper.”

“Hail Reaper.”