REVIEW: Golden Son (RR, #2)
I knew Golden Son would be an insane read — so much so that I dropped Azarinth Healer for it.
If you’ve been following the plot up to now (pun intended), you’ll remember that, in last month’s review, I dropped Azarinth Healer at about 50%, knowing that, by that point, I knew what the book’s vibe was, and I wasn’t fully down with it. I still wanted something with more plot, more progression, more insane twists, and from glancing at reviews and discussion, apparently that’s exactly what Golden Son would be.
It felt surprising, from the outside looking in. Red Rising took time to get to the good parts, and had plenty of time between the best parts for the character building, but people had said Golden Son would be different? That it would be insane from beginning to end?
No way, right?
YES. YES WAY.
Golden Son starts with a mock space battle. We’ve gone from trials and a war fought in mountains and valleys, to kicking off with a space battle where Darrow almost fights back by launching himself into the bridge. Golden Son begins in the stars, telling us from the get-go that things’ll be different.
But things are the same in also starting with a reset.
See, the Red Rising series has a bit of a loop, embodied and established even in the first entry. At the beginning, Darrow is hit by some life-changing event that sends him back to the “bottom”, before, by the end, he’s back on top. At the end of the last book, after he was adopted by Augustus from literally conquering the Institute games, it felt like things were on the up.
Yet, Golden Son, as it takes things to a new level, also tells us that, at this new level, Darrow is still an underdog, again. He gets beat and pissed on by Karnus Bellona and his gang, and because of his beef with the Bellonas, Augustus essentially gives him a two week notice.
But if he’s fired, if he’s no longer under Nero Augustus’s protection, he’s dead.
It’s almost like shonen, the usual trope of introducing a new bad guy even more powerful than the last, forcing the MC to undergo some transformation to prevail. It forces them to…
CHANGE THE PARADIGM
In Red Rising, Darrow joined the Sons of Ares and got carved to become a Gold. Here, the trademarked paradigm shift is the club, the meeting with Harmony, and the Gala.
And things shift.
This is a generational start to a book. He meets and forms an alliance with the main antagonist of the last book, pretending he’s not a terrorist the entire time before the club gets bombed, he saves the Jackal’s life, and meets up with Harmony to learn Dancer’s “gone” and Eo had a child that died with her.
And Mustang is with Cassius.
There was so much hype going into the Gala, including Darrow drugging Roque before flipping a middle finger to everything, challenging Cassius to a duel, winning, and kicking off a civil war, turning the plot from what we thought would be an uprising vs. Gold story into Gold vs. Gold political warfare.
…for the most part.
One of the most controversial aspects of this setup, though, is the twist/reveal of how Darrow trained with Lorn, with the information hidden from the audience despite the book being written from Darrow’s point of view. Yet, looking back, there were several clues about how he had been training with Lorn, and even if I missed them, I still feel like it’s so creative how Darrow himself is an unreliable narrator. Pierce, through Darrow, hides information from the reader to pull it out for the sake of enhancing the hype of a scene, multiple times throughout the series — like when they kidnapped Lysander against Aja.
Even if I know the technique, I don’t see a problem with it.
It’s just that cool, and Golden Son doesn’t stop. Ever. You know that level of anticipation when you know something’s about to happen in a book? GS is stacked with that back-to-back, from the gala, to escaping the Augustus estate, to the set piece of Darrow and Sevro shooting themselves into the bridge of the strongest ship in the Scepter Armada, to the introduction of the great RAGNAR VOLARUS.
Yet between these explosive setpieces, we still get the moments to breathe and build character, like Darrow talking to Sevro and Mustang before they convinced Lorn to join. Through those moments, we also get subtle yet unfortunate sign of how Roque’s friendship keeps constantly getting deteriorated. Darrow keeps pushing making things better with him down in favor of more important things, but even after Quinn’s killed and he lets Aja go, he still does. It’s a human mistake, but there will surely be time for him to make up later, right?
His one on one with Ragnar stood out to me, too. I’m not the first one to discover this, I know, but Ragnar mirrors early book 1 Darrow, believing the brainwashing of the Golds so deeply that he doesn’t understand the need of a Want. Wanting is for the Gods. Obsidians just do. It’s like how early on in RR, we take all those worldbuilding details thinking they’re real because Darrow believes them, until the rug pull.
Even after all of that, we still have to talk about the words.
"TELL ALL WHO WILL HEAR, THE REAPER SAILS TO MARS."
I did not know that GS would have the Iron Rain. I’ve heard this phrase so many times in TikTok audios pertaining to RR as a series, but I had no idea it was here, nor did I expect it to be as insane as it was. The Lion’s Rain was the best depiction of a war that I have ever read in a book, and it was so awesome, I had to get on the game to roleplay in Helldivers 2 as a soldier in an Iron Rain. I’ve never felt that close to the events of a book before. Only anime has ever reached that point for me, where I’ve wanted to go and be what I’m experiencing in that fictional property.
It’s given such reverence during and immediately afterwards that you feel how massive this event is to the setting, and sure enough, from reading Morning Star, they come back to talking about the Lion’s Rain with unmatched hype, just like how it felt to read it.
But then, we have the last third.
AND THUS GO LIARS
I kept away from all spoilers. SOMEONE even left a comment that I didn’t understand yet, and shoutout to that person for describing Roque’s betrayal without describing it.
Three pages.
In just three pages, in one of the most shocking plot twists I’ve read, every norm and every character that seems to be an unshakeable pillar is crackled, broken, and flipped on top of its head, leaving us to wonder where things can eve go from here.
GOLDEN SON deserves a reread. Not like when I reread Red Rising, ‘cause I didn’t like it that much the first time, but because I liked it so much that I just want to reexperience every action scene, every fight scene, every twist and jump into the next set piece. This is a fun, exhilarating, and explosive book.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to Helldiving those bloodydamn pixie automatons.