I Should Have Stopped Earlier
Hail Mighty Caesar!
I’ve read the first three books of the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown. I keep track of books I’ve read on Fable. I gave the first book 4 Stars, the second book—Golden Son—3.5 Stars, and the final book, Morning Star just 2 Stars.
I can’t get over how badly I disliked the third book. I finished it a few days ago and I’m still annoyed at it. There are a few reasons for why I feel this way which I’ll detail below. Be warned that everything after this is filled with Spoilers. All of the Spoilers. I’m literally going to discuss the final chapter in the third book because that’s another area where I have a complaint.
Firstly, Mustang is basically 'testing’ Darrow for the entire book, at least once they reunite. She says that she’s trying to figure out if Darrow can build something or just destroy everything. Quick question, though—what did Mustang build? Anything? She’s not part of the Sons of Ares in the beginning, she isn’t out in the territories beyond the asteroid belt building a coalition to take on the Sovereign, she’s not working as head of a solo rebel group on Lune to take down the leader from that area… she’s just in hiding. Meanwhile, Darrow gives a speech that is broadcast to everyone in the solar system where he tells all the lower colors to rise up for themselves. He’s the military head of the Rising, which at this part of the war is probably the more important part of the rebellion. I don’t get why Darrow wouldn’t laugh in her face when he realizes she’s ‘testing’ him.
That part annoyed me, but Darrow (and others) seem to think there is value in Mustang being around to help with the next phase of the rebellion, the building phase. I don’t understand why they would think this. The series mentions she dislikes aspects of the Society and would like to see changes, but it’s a damn slave-state. You can’t reform your way out of that, you burn it to the ground.
The ending of the book is a fight against the Sovereign’s bodyguard, the heroes finally kill her, and take out the Sovereign. They then march to the collected Senate where Mustang proclaims herself to be in charge by raising the special stick in one hand and the Sovereign’s detached head in the other!
WTF?
The author also mentions specifically that this was how the previous Sovereign—back when she had a head—climbed to the throne. If you’re a senator and you have to confirm the next emperor of their Society, you’re slightly worried that she’s close with Darrow but at least it’s not Darrow now in charge. Nothing she presents to the audience is different than the last emperor’s ascension. She has the special stick. She doesn’t immediately put the senators to the death. She has the previous emperor’s head in her other hand. She doesn’t ignore the senators and just go directly to the people. She hasn’t even taken off the Sigils on her hand. The only person who has done that is Darrow and it’s odd enough that the author mentions multiple people have stared at his hands in surprise. If you’re a senator, you’re concerned but ultimately this is someone you can work with.
On the other hand, imagine you’re a Red, you’ve been freed from your hovel, told that you, your family and friends have been lied to and Mars has been habitable for centuries, but the leaders just wanted you down in the mines slaving away. You’re moved to a terrible city with no food or medicine. You’re conscripted—maybe volunteer—into the army, fight a whole bunch of battles against other slaves bred to kill… and suddenly someone says, “We’re done. The Gold we don’t like is dead, and another Gold is now in charge. She’s the Reaper’s girlfriend.” What part of that would make you want to stop this rebellion? You’re slave society has collapsed and the person in charge was considered a Reformer, previously, and not even a Radical Reformer at that. Nah, I’d keep fighting.
I think of this this way. Consider the following two scenarios.
Mustang has no interest in living in a slave state and wants to burn everything down to create something new
Mustang (and Cassius, but we’ll get to that) don’t want to live in the horrors of the Antebellum South, so they work together to move the Society along to the Jim Crow South.
How does the ending change in either of those scenarios? You’d have to work to fit a slip of paper in the difference between those two scenarios.
The character of Mustang never built anything in the series. She just hung around while Darrow destroyed everything he touched. She has no right to be part of the post-Rising leadership. Her telling the Senators she now how the special stick and the previous Sovereign’s head means nothing.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Darrow doesn’t begin the third novel on the front lines. Rather, he’s trapped in a box that’s being used as a dining table by the Jackal. He becomes friends with the Darkness.
Then he gets out and… he goes back to being the Darrow from the first two books. He was in the box for 9 months, fed through a feed tube that provided barely enough nutrients to live, and a few months later he’s fine.
Absolutely not, brother. No way. Dude would be completely gone. He’s be in therapy for a decade, and at the end he wouldn’t be ‘healed’, he just be falling forward in time until his supernatural body gave out.
The Darkness and his experience with it is mentioned later, but it’s not really a point of contention with him. He dives into stupid fights as if he’s invincible—but he knows he’s not. He was literally in a box with nothing but his thoughts for NINE WHOLE MONTHS!
If an author introduces something that harrowing to the reader at the beginning of the book, I’d expect the book to be about that experience. We didn’t get that. He actually healed up, though he was a sad boy because his friends are now dead. Not because he was in a box for NINE WHOLE MONTHS, no, just because his friends are dead and he’s realized his dead wife was full of shit.
Seriously, he really shits on Eo for a good part of the third book and even much of the second. His mom told him she didn’t like his dead wife and he just dropped his estimation of her, didn’t he?
Anyway, one last thing to mention—you can’t convince me that Cassius and Mustang aren’t still seeing each other. Firstly, I do want to mention that Mustang hooking up with Cassius was easily one of the dumber things about Book 2, Golden Son. She knows Cassius despises Darrow, that he has a blood feud going with the guy, and she still hooks up with him. She explains it’s part of her plot to save her family. I feel like I’m missing something in her plan.
In the third book, the main characters spend a bunch of time dragging Cassius around as a hostage. If Mustang was really all in, why didn’t she take him out? Because she still has feelings for him. At least Sevro wanted to just kill him, even if he didn’t so as not to upset their warlord. I’m not sure Mustang ever wanted to kill him, I think she wanted him alive so she could become the new Sovereign, put in some half-assed reforms, plot to have Darrow killed, and boom—new husband she can rule the Society with.
You know who I feel bad for? New Pax. In fifteen years (I know it doesn’t happen this way, I’m aware the series continued), mom and Cassius are going to sit him down and say Pax isn’t the kid’s name, he’s actually named after his Uncle Julian, who was killed by the guy he thought was his dad for all of his life. I’m not sure that’s NINE WHOLE MONTHS of Darkness worth of therapy required to help him, but it’s pretty close.
This post is already too long, so I’ll just rapid fire some other annoyances here.
The final fight with Ava wasn’t required. Not all of Darrow, Mustang, Sevro, or Cassius needed to be in the room with the Sovereign and the Jackal. You really only needed Darrow and Cassius. In Book 2, those two alone would have been able to take out Ava.
Ragnar not getting a hit on Ava during their fight was bullshit. As mentioned above, she was not that good in Book 2. I don’t know how she became a super-boss in this book.
Ragnar was awesome. Him becoming more human was one of my favorite parts of the second two books. Not sure he would have become a Howler, though.
Quicksilver arrived a book too late. If you’re going to introduce the money of the rebellion in the final book, at least drop it in the first couple chapters. Instead we only find out about him a third of the way through the final book and he’s suddenly the 2nd most important part of the Rising.
Darrow destroying the ship docks in the Rim territories to win the next war was a good moment, I liked that.
I never took to Roque for the entire series, so his death was kinda ‘meh’ for me. The Pink opening the door, though, that was good.
After Cassius ‘killed’ Sevro, I closed the book and had a good think. Was the author dumb or was this a trick? I felt certain this was a trick and continued. In which case, why not tell us? Why was there so much writing about how sad Darrow was that another of his friends died? We all knew it was a trick, don’t waste my time like that. I wonder if an earlier version of the book had him actually dead. But then he wrote himself into a corner by making Ava into Shin-Ryu, so needed Sevro to come back to turn the fight.