Books: Morning Star By Pierce Brown (2016)

In Morning Star, the conclusion of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Trilogy, we get another wild tale of war, revenge, politics, duplicitous humans, and more death and destruction than you can shake a leg at.

 “Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society's mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within. Finally, the time has come. But the devotion to honor and hunger, for vengeance, runs deep on both sides. Darrow and his comrades-in-arms face powerful enemies without scruple or mercy. Among them are some that Darrow once considered friends. To win, Darrow will need to inspire those shackled in darkness to break their chains, unmake the world their cruel masters have built, and claim a destiny too long denied - and too glorious to surrender.” 

There is a lot at stake here, and the novel runs faster, harder, and more headlong than the previous two novels (mostly because there is a lot of stuff to cover in its 518 pages) combined. There is little time for sitting and talking, which is good…and bad. While the relentless works, it also takes on a sense that while many will pay the price for this war, you know the ending. Brown gives us a few surprises though, and brings forward Servo to give the series the dark, sarcastic humor it has lacked, but the ending was never in doubt. 

While the first person narrative worked for the first two books, here I feel that book could’ve been stronger had we seen other perspectives. Being in Darrow’s head all the time made the book go over so much of the same ground the previous books did. I have no doubt he loved Eo, but it becomes redundant when we cover his guilt feelings for her death and those of his extended family again and again. 

When I read the first book back in 2014, I was curious if the author was going to explain how, some 700 hundred years in the future, we humans became the way these folks did, where a society is based on color codes, where the Roman Empire somehow came again. But either it was not important, or something else, but we never get a glimpse on how this happened, even as Morning Star does make more references to Earth, to the Romans of yesteryear. I mean the works of Homer and Sophocles survived, but apparently Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire did not, which I find curious (I also ruminated on the oddness of Darrow’s name that came up in Red Rising, that the name was unusual, but again, this story thread was dropped).

 

Unlike James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series, which went out of its way to explain space travel, Pierce Brown forgoes all of this, which then leads me to believe this whole series really is a space opera in the vein of Star Wars or Star Trek, with a lot of gory elements borrowed from George R.R. Martin.

This was not, as it may seem, a horrible series. I enjoyed it and look forward to seeing where Pierce Brown goes from here. It’s just I’m not a huge fan of ultra sadistic books, where human life is tossed away like a forgotten toy. I go numb from the horrible ways in which people die, even these fictional characters. That is part of the reason I gave up on Game of Thrones. I grew weary of so much death, and the blurring of the line between moving the story forward and torture porn.

As I said, I’m curious as where Pierce Brown will go from here. A nice hard-core science fiction novel or even a good fantasy novel would be nice. I hate to see him stuck producing just this style of space opera over the next decade. 

But we’ll see.

Books: Golden Son By Pierce Brown (2015)

With Golden Son, author Pierce Brown's second novel in his Red Rising Trilogy, he's able to forgo the World Building that preoccupied the first book and rush pellmell into Darrow's emotional and very violent struggle to bring down the Gold society from within that dominates the worlds of Mars and Luna (the moon). 

The story picks up two years after the events of Red Rising, and we see Darrow au Andromedus on a training mission aboard his own starship for war-games -though these Academy days seem fairly over, as this is about all we see of that time. Still, as Darrow navigates his way, he worries about the fact that in that time, he's heard nothing from the Sons of Ares, the secret rebellion group that started him on this journey. In the end though, this shift away from the Institute opens the book to a wider and more complex arena, even if the reader is forced to believe that Darrow had the ability, the agility to keep up his deceptive appearance amongst the duplicitous Golds for all those years without hearing from the Sons of Ares. Anyways, Darrow’s reach has expand exponentially, and story leaves Mars behind (for now) which helps with the action, as things move swifter than a nail driven through concrete out into the galaxy. Brown, however, is not afraid to take his hero Darrow down a few pegs, but like any true defender of the downtrodden, he gets back up to continue. But this can also be a bit of contrivance, Brown ultimately explains it that the reason Darrow does not let things defeat him is because the real tragedy of this struggle is the massive loss of life -something not done by his hand, of course, but more so the effect of what he's become. So he's driven more by guilt so he must always get back up on his two feet. And that maybe one of the very few flaws with the book; Brown's over reliance on this story structure. Darrow encounter's some horrible situation, then comes up with a magical (it seems) solution then suddenly stumbles into another setback. 

Unfortunately, this had the tendency to take me out of the narrative. But the book does rocket along and (hopefully) it'll break out of the box that some seem to want to put it in, that this is just another dystopian novel in the vein of The Hunger Games. By far, these books (especially this second one) are better written, with more complex characters and with higher stakes, so those thoughts should be set aside. 

Again, there is no clear explanation to how Earth fell, but Brown makes some veiled references. History, they say, repeats itself and Golden Son could be defined as a retelling of the Roman Empire during its glory years. And while Homer and Sophocles survived, apparently Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire did not. And this colored based society has no historian (probably suppressed by the Golds), but to be honest, I'm not sure they would even admit that the original Roman tumbled under its own importance. 

I'm curious if, in the end, all this series is really is about, a science fiction retelling of Roman Empire and it's eventual (in book III) fall. 

But for me, who devoured this in a few days, I have a long wait for 2016 and that final book.

Books: Red Rising by Pierce Brown (2014)

Though in his debut novel, Red Rising, author Pierce Brown cobbles together themes from Ender’s Game, Gladiators, The Hunger Games, Captain America and even 300, the idea that it could be horrible is far from the truth. 

And while found in the science fiction section (instead of Young Adults), most of the book reads like it’s set in some variation of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones universe –with castles, horses and one betrayal after another. 

Red Rising is set about 700 years or so in our future, where the inner planets and outer moons have all been terraformed (which also reminded me of James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series). But somewhere in the past (and borrowing another sci-fi trope) while  technology has progressed, humanity has regressed back to almost Roman times (Brown uses many Roman and Greek names for characters and cities); the solar system is ruled many powerful families, and all are competing to be on top. 

And like all those born with a silver spoon in their mouths, they don’t go into the difficult task of terraforming themselves, but use other people, low-born folks (frontline workers I would say), to build your world. The gist of the story is set on Mars and we learn early that society is graded by colors (which is not a new plot element either, but I believe Brown chose this particular color-coding for a reason that is not fully explained until you learn about the authors background), Gold are at the top and Reds are at the bottom (author Jasper Fforde does a variation on this in his 2010 novel Shades of Grey). 

Our hero is 16 year-old Darrow, who is a Red. Worse, he's a lowRed, working the mines of Mars, never allowed to see the surface. LowReds are told they are pioneers working to make the planet bloom, but it's a lie. The planet has bloomed already. But like Ender, like Katniss, Luke Skywalker, Darrow is the Chosen One, though he –of course- does not know that. He’s better and quicker than all of his fellow workers and family, and he’s smart and asks all the wrong questions, which puts him on the radar of the Rebel Alliance; I mean the Sons of Ares, a mysterious group of freedom fighters who have deep pockets and plans to over throw the ruling families of the solar system. 

With the death of his wife (yeah, life in the mines is short –mid 30’s is considered old), Darrow loses what happiness he had, and with one little rebellious act, he’s hanged (and like The Expanse, Brown pays a bit of attention to science and ignores a bunch of other stuff), but  due to Mars low gravity, a hanged person must be pulled by the ankles to complete the neck breaking. 

But, as you can guess, this was all a ruse. Now in the hands of the Sons of Ares, Darrow goes from skinny, but swift emo teenager into a Captain America body that screams Aryan (which means no actor of color will be cast in the movie version of this book). The idea is that with the boys temperament and his idea of hurting the ones who allowed his wife to die, they can disguise him as a Gold and make him eligible to compete in games for promotion. 

As plans move forward, Darrow (which is an unusual name for a Gold apparently, as it’s mentioned by others many times through the book, and I wonder if there is pay-off in subsequent books) must fight and kill, first in a cage-fight called The Passage (which really is another word for culling) then an epic game on the surface of Mars where dozens of Houses fight for control of a wilderness reserve. 

I liked the book, even though it gets off to a clunky start. The last half, however, moves very fast. And as it’s the beginning of a trilogy, Brown does not explain much about how society fell backwards. Of course, either he’ll explain this in later novels or maybe he’ll just assume no cares about that tedious aspect and just get wrapped up in the story. 

Still, what bothers me –again this is not explained- if the games (which lead to apprenticeships and other high-end goals) are not about wholesale slaughter of rich and powerful Golds –then what is the endgame (beyond what Sons of Ares want)? I mean we see these teens acting ruthless, being treacherous and trying to enslave others, but Fitchner (this novels variation of Hunger Games Haymitch Abernathy) keeps pointing out that while torture is deemed okay, wholesale murder is not. Yet that goes on multiple times throughout the book. 

Then again, perhaps we can find some of what Pierce Brown is foisting on us by looking at his background, especially his time as an aide on U.S. Senate campaign (along with stint as a page at NBC and a “peon” on the Disney lot). Perhaps he’s taken those years working for these sometimes ruthless people and upped the ante here. It makes some sort of sense. But in the in the end, if one person has to go all through this shit just to be an apprentice to some high and mighty folk, the person who hires them has to be more evil than them.