Golden Son (Red Rising #2)

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Title: Golden Son
Series: Red Rising
Author: Pierce Brown
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SFF
Pages: 466
Format: Kindle Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Darrow has survived and become a leader for a powerful Gold. His future, and his plans for the sons of Ares, seem assured. But Gold culture is hard and cruel. Your wins mean nothing if you lose. And Darrow loses.
At the same time, when he is about to be sold to the highest bidder, he finds out that Ares is dead and that the leaders now want mass Gold murder and give him a radium bomb to take to the auction.
Darrow overcomes all of the above to start a civil war in the Golds culture and avoid the shortsightedness of the new rebel leaders. He is truly a Golden Son on a meteoric rise.
But the Gold saying of Rise so high, in mud you lie always comes true and betrayal always comes from those closest to you.

My Thoughts:  Spoilers Ahead

A great addition to the Red Rising series. I didn't enjoy this quite as much as the first book but most of that was because of dealing with spaceship battles. I'm much more of the mano-a-mano type of fighting. Guns, lightsabers, swords, whatever, just give me some ground pounders duking it out.

It was interesting to see Darrow struggling with the ethical dilemma of what he was doing. Is he trying to bring down the Golds? Is he trying to make all the colors equal? Is he trying to make people change? What is he supposed to be doing and at what point is something too much to justify it? That type of pressure would have broken me and I would have just set off the radium bomb and said 'to heck with you all'. And speaking of the radium bomb, I think it still has a part to play.

I kept waiting for the betrayal because that is what Gold's do. A continual culling process that lasts a lifetime. So when Darrow was able to actually attack the Sovereign even after having been betrayed by somebody, I figured that was it. I did not see the ending coming. When one of his friends finds out he is actually a Red and betrays him? And Ares truly dies and we see his head in a box? Blindsided. Completely and utterly blindsided.

Really wetted my appetite for the final book to see how he survives and what his goals become with Ares dead. Highly recommended.