REVIEW: Iron Gold (RR, #4)
Iron Gold is a shift.
For starters, it’s the beginning of the — surprise, surprise — Iron Gold saga of Red Rising. Where the first books are one cohesive trilogy, spanning Darrow’s mission of becoming a Gold to destroy the Society and defeat Octavia, Iron Gold, Dark Age, and the most recent book, Lightbringer, are a trilogy on their own set ten years later as the resulting Solar Republic fights off threats from all sides.
Notice how I phrased that as the Solar Republic, not just Darrow?
Exactly. It’s even more of a shift because now, instead of just Darrow, we’re getting four POV’s! Iron Gold is told from the perspectives of our boy Darrow, Lyria of Lagalos, a Red who grew up in a mine, Ephraim ti Horn, a disillusioned Gray, and Lysander, the heir of the “fallen” Society.
This is a huge switch-up, and for some people, it could’ve made Iron Gold so much more confusing and convoluted, since we’ve got four separate plotlines to follow that don’t have much to do with each other. Let alone the fact that, just on the surface-level, it’s a huge writing style shift to go from one singular character’s mind for three books to four different people!
But Pierce balances it well. I loved getting to see so much more of the world through the eyes of other characters, and it was so sick every time they’d reference past events through these other characters’ POVs as if it was real mythology, considering that we were there personally through Darrow! Even with him, from his POV, he feels so horrible about himself, about the things he’s done, he’s constantly doubting himself, constantly on the backburner, but from everyone else, he’s talked about like a living God of Death.
Almost like some kind of…Reaper?
Furthermore, there’s a ten-year timeskip between Iron Gold and the end of Morning Star, so everyone’s older and more mature after a decade of constant war. Taking a break from the series to read those other three books made this timeskip feel real to me, too, so when characters referred to battles with a historical mysticism, I felt that!
As for who those characters are…
OUR POINTS OF VIEW
I’m not describing the POV’s in chronological order, but I want to talk about Lyria of Lagalos, first, a Red who grew up in the mines just like Darrow, and had her family pulled out once the Society fell and the Solar Republic started making changes.
As a character, though, I was not a fan of her. I don’t enjoy passive “protagonists” — those who have events constantly just happening to them, rather than them having many goals of their own. Lyria is disillusioned with the new Republic that seems to have left them behind, pulled them out of the mines, replaced them with robots, and then forewent any further proper support, still leaving them in overwhelming poverty and helplessness. Despite their promises of assistance, the Republic is late to help when terrorists attack and kill her entire village.
But in that lateness, Kavax au Telemanus is trapped in his armor and falls in the lake, and when Lyria risks her life to save him, that’s the start of her being wrapped up in the larger machinations at play. Getting wrapped up in BS and a cynicism built upon empty promises is at the heart of Lyria’s character, and it’s so interesting to watch that show how imperfect the new society Virginia’s trying to create is, but the amount of things just happening to and around Lyria really tested my faith in how much Pierce was cooking.
It was all worth it later.
Second, we have Ephraim ti Horn, the husband of Trigg ti Nakamura, one of the Gray soldiers that rescued Darrow back in Morning Star, who died at the hands of Aja. Due to his war trauma and the heartbreak of losing his love to Darrow’s Rising, Ephraim’s checked out of the war, instead working heists and odd jobs as a mercenary. That’s where he plays a part, as he’s hired by a criminal organization to kidnap Darrow and Mustang’s son, Pax, and Sevro and Victra’s daughter, Electra.
Ephraim’s POV was my second favorite, showing just how sci-fi the world of Red Rising is, even outside of the interplanetary wars. Red Rising’s setting is so much more like Cyberpunk 2077 for the everyday person, and Ephraim’s plotline reminded me of Cyberpunk Edgerunners. It was a heist plotline through and through. His perspective showed the consequences of Darrow’s Rising, which were hard to see from the top looking down, and brutal once we see through the eyes of a soldier who lived through those ten years of war afterwards.
Speaking of our boy, of course Darrow’s a POV in Iron Gold, and of course he was my favorite. Iron Gold, for Darrow, is like the beginning of the end, before he heads into his darkest times (wink). He’s treated like a criminal, like a true warlord, with his POV starting off with an Iron Rain to take Mercury and the reveal that 1. he ignored the governmental process of approval for his attack, 2. he ignored and killed peace emissaries sent by the Society Remnant, and 3. Millions died in his Iron Rain. He carries the majority of the best action in this entire book, as he, Sevro, and the Howlers flee Earth to break out a criminal and go attack the presumed head of the Society Remnant themselves.
So the book unfolds in two isolated layers so far, with Lyria and Ephraim’s plotline, and then Darrow’s escapades, but who’s the fourth POV? Who’s the special someone we haven’t talked about yet?
LYSANDER...OH LYSANDER.
You know this name if you’ve finished the series, and trust — I do, too.
Let’s stick to what happens in Iron Gold.
Lysander and Cassius have been roaming the asteroid belt, fighting pirates and saving randoms ever since the Society fell, and a particular rescue mission brings them back into the war. I didn’t understand why everyone had such a hate for Lysander, at this point, ‘cause he was great, here! I was a fan, honestly, of his conflicted and naive ideals towards the society he was meant to inherit. I knew he’d later take on an antagonistic role somehow, so as a fan of characters like Anakin Skywalker, the fact that his arc in this book was his first steps toward that role was amazing.
Through him, we also got a firsthand look at our boy Cassius — yes, our boy Cassius. My favorite character, and here we are, witnessing how much he’s spiraling from his guilt after everything he did against the Rising in the last trilogy. Even if Darrow carried most of the action, he had the best fight scene in the book, because HIS HONOR REMAINS!
…even if he died afterwards.
HOW DID IT END?
Cassius dies and Lysander joins the Outer Rim to unite the Golds against the Republic. Ephraim, fleeing from the Syndicate with the children he was supposed to kidnap, crashes his ship. Darrow leaves for Mercury in what sounds like a suicide mission. Lyria is stabbed and knocked unconscious.
And then…the book ends.
It just ends, right there. I was heated, and of course I flew into Dark Age as quickly as I could. Sure enough, with so much charge going into Dark Age, shit hit the fan. It hit all fans. But that smelly explanation is for next next week’s review!
Ranking-wise, I put Iron Gold as my second-worst, just above Red Rising. It did a lot of fundamental setup for the arc to follow, but the books after it were just that peak, and it came after the heights of Golden Son and Morning Star.
As a final rating…