Review: Iron Gold by Pierce Brown
Blurb:
They call him father, liberator, warlord, Slave King, Reaper. But he feels a boy as he falls toward the war-torn planet, his armor red, his army vast, his heart heavy. It is the tenth year of war and the thirty-third of his life.
A decade ago Darrow was the hero of the revolution he believed would break the chains of the Society. But the Rising has shattered everything: Instead of peace and freedom, it has brought endless war. Now he must risk all he has fought for on one last desperate mission. Darrow still believes he can save everyone, but can he save himself?
And throughout the worlds, other destinies entwine with Darrow’s to change his fate forever:
A young Red girl flees tragedy in her refugee camp, and achieves for herself a new life she could never have imagined.
An ex-soldier broken by grief is forced to steal the most valuable thing in the galaxy—or pay with his life.
And Lysander au Lune, the heir in exile to the Sovereign, wanders the stars with his mentor, Cassius, haunted by the loss of the world that Darrow transformed, and dreaming of what will rise from its ashes.
Red Rising was the story of the end of one universe. Iron Gold is the story of the creation of a new one. Witness the beginning of a stunning new saga of tragedy and triumph from masterly New York Times bestselling author Pierce Brown.
Review:
One of the biggest risks an author can take after the conclusion of a fantastic series is…well, continuing that series. I had my hesitations about revisiting the Red Rising series after its stellar initial conclusion in Morning Star. I feared that my positive feelings toward the first three books may have dampened were I to pick up this relaunch and not hold it to the same heights. Stupid me should have known that Pierce Brown wouldn’t let me down. Iron Gold is a gorydamn blast, a hell of a return to the Red Rising series, and has me itching to get to the next book.
Ten years have passed since Darrow led a revolution that shattered the foundations of the Society that took everything from him. But a decade of continued war has shown that it was not just the Society he broke—it was everything. Where he thought there would be peace, there is bloodshed; where there was to be freedom, there has been deception. And from this world that Darrow has ruptured emerges three whose fates have intertwined with his—a Red girl from whom tragedy has taken everything; an ex-soldier forced into a dangerous heist; and the exiled heir to the Sovereign who dreams of what will rise from the ashes of what Darrow burned down. And when these fates converge, Darrow must balance the titles he took on after the close of the Rising—father, liberator—against the skin he had long hoped to shed—the Red Reaper.
The biggest change Brown brings to the table with Iron Gold is the shift from writing in a single point of view to writing in multiple points of view. Where he continues in first-person narration, I had my misgivings going into the book about how well that would translate, but those hesitations were unwarranted. Being back in the shoes of Darrow was a treat, and to see how his world has changed—or even not changed—since the close of Morning Star was great. He is a father and a husband now, but after fighting a rebellion for so long and seating himself as the ArchImperator, there are some conflicts he cannot walk away from, and the personal life he had hoped to achieve at rebellion’s end feels as much of a battle for him as the killing fields he is forced to walk. Darrow’s arc is a fascinating one for this reason. In a sense, it’s almost an inverse of his arc from the initial trilogy, where he has achieved his greatest heights, but there is no way he can ascend further. The only way is down, and that helps plot points from feeling like too much of a retread. It shows that the path to peace is not a starting and ending point, nor is it one with linearity. It’s an intelligent personification of what happens at a war’s end—because it never quite ends, and there is always going to be a continued conflict.
But the three new POVs—Lyria, Ephraim, and Lysander—really help elevate Iron Gold even higher, and are probably even to the benefit of the series going forward. There was only so much more Brown could do with Darrow before it got too samey, and bringing in these fresh faces points of view helped move the plot along and illuminate the fact that, while we view Darrow as the series hero, he is not universally viewed as such in-universe. There are those who view him as a warlord, a tyrant, a man who is no better or worse than those he tore down during his revolution. Lyria’s arc in particular was the star of the show, as she has similar points of origin as Darrow as a Red, faces similar tragedies as he did, but she acts more as a shadow to a path he did not walk. There’s some nuance here that almost shows what Darrow’s story could have been had he chosen a different path. And while Ephraim and Lysander’s arcs take a bit longer to hit their stride, they end up hitting hard just the same, especially Lysander in his interactions with our old friend and goodman Cassius.
Brown doesn’t hold anything back in this one. It’s tense and shocking throughout, with betrayals and bloodshed abound, as exhilarating in its vicious moments as it is in its cleaner ones. The slower set up in the book’s first act sets up the chaos in the second and third acts marvelously, and once Iron Gold really gets going, it sinks its gorydamn claws into you, urging you forward until the dust doesn’t settle, but lingers in the air, enticing you to immediately grab the next book.
Which is what I’ll definitely be doing soon. Iron Gold is an example of the best way to return to a beloved series. It builds off the strong foundation laid in the original trilogy, and shows the consequences of the birth of a new world, a new order, a new society. Full steam ahead to the next entry.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, my goodman, it’s time for me to get the Doom Eternal soundtrack ready to go—I have a strong feeling I’m gonna need it soon enough with this series.
