So I finally finished the ‘Red Rising’ trilogy this week and I have … mixed feelings. Don’t get me wrong, the series as a whole is excellent and the passion and quality only get higher and higher as the books go on, including in the third book ‘Morning Star.’ I could heap compliments on these books all day long, which is what I did for the last two reviews, so I thought today I would give some criticisms that have been brewing the in the back of my mind while reading. These few issues I have (only one big one) came to a head at the end of ‘Morning Star.’ I’ll be spoiling the crap out of all of them this time, so don’t read the post if you haven’t read the books yet! They’re just too good to spoil.
So, in ‘Morning Star’ Darrow starts out worse off than he has ever been. It’s pretty dark. Some of the heaviest material I’ve read in a long time actually. Pierce Brown was able to come up with some alarmingly creative torture that the long-standing villain, the Jackal, inflicts on Darrow after his betrayal at the end of ‘Golden Son,’ and it doesn’t seem likely that Darrow is going to make it out of this one. Thankfully for our raging Red however, there’s a big theme that’s spelled out in the first book, wherein those who rise to power are destined to fall when they become too decadent in their abuse of it. This establishes a sort of complimentary theme in that whenever Darrows gets knocked down, he goes on an ever more meteoric rise back to the top. The Red … is always rising. See what he’s done there? Too on the nose? Maybe for some, but not for me. I actually like seeing this kind of repetitious structure because it sets up the novel for some great turnabouts later on when the repetition is either broken or subverted for something grander … Again, spoiler alert if you didn’t catch the first one somehow.
Sadly, this also relates to my criticisms. For the vast majority of these books, Darrow’s POV is absolute. He is a very reliable narrator, and the reader knows almost everything he knows, all the time. There is a moment in ‘Golden Son,’ where this rule is broken however. Subverting the trend this way can work, but is also very risky. It’s revealed at a pivotal moment around the 1/3 mark of ‘Golden Son’ that Darrow has been training as a duelist under the epically titled character, ‘The Rage Knight,’ Lorn au Arcos for two years during the period between the first book and the second. This is a huge deal because Lorn has publicly refused to train any new students and so everyone is shocked when Darrow reveals his expertise at dueling to defeat his rival Cassius in humiliating fashion and kick off a civil war in the process. The reader is also unaware of this though. We’ve never met Lorn. We do know though, that Darrow refused Lorn’s implicit offer of mentorship at the end of the first book to get closer to his target, Nero au Augustus instead. This makes it hard to believe that Lorn would train him anyway, and in my opinion, the explanation for this was always pretty thin.
Ultimately though it’s still a fun twist, albeit with the negative side effect of harming the reader’s trust in Darrow’s POV. If he can keep a secret this big from you, the person who is ostensibly inside his mind, what else might he be lying about? This is at the heart of my criticism of ‘Morning Star’ because this same pattern occurs again, only it does much worse damage.
There are several mitigating factors in the twist at the beginning of ‘Golden Son.’ For starters, it’s at the beginning. So even you lose a little faith in Darrow’s POV, at least he wasn’t lying to you during the climax, right? Also, he never actually lies. I kinda knew something was coming beforehand because several other characters, allies and enemies alike, mention how Darrow doesn’t seem to practice his dueling skills, even going so far as to criticize him for avoiding that which he’s not good at. Darrow never rises to these challenges. He never even thinks about the skills he might be lacking, which defies his archetypal anxiety over every little weakness he has. There’s one more big mitigating factor, in that the reader hasn’t been following Darrow for the last couple of years. The time gap between the end of the first book and the start of the second leaves some room for Darrow to have been practicing skills we as readers are unaware of, and we can give him some credit for keeping it such a well-kept secret for so long. He’s not lying to us. We missed it. And he’s playing things close to the chest because everybody around him is an absolute snake who would kill him at the drop of a pin. Darrow’s status as reliable narrator survives this fun twist … But I don’t think the same can be said for the third book.
It’s a little much to explain here, but the gist is, a beloved character ‘dies’ at the hands of Cassius at the very end of ‘Morning Star.’ It looks like the ultimate dishonorable betrayal, since Darrow, Mustang, and Sevro have decided to release their one-time friend as a show of good faith, only for him to pull Sevro’s gun and kill him. Then he captures Darrow and brings him to the Jackal and the Sovereign, ostensibly winning the war for the ruling powers. It turns out in the end that it was all a big ruse to trick their way into the inner sanctum on Luna and kill all the major villains while the fleets duke it out in the skies above. Cassius redeems himself, Sevro lives, and all the villains get what’s coming to them. Red finally Rises. A good plan, a satisfying end to the trilogy, and interesting twist, but at what cost?
Personally, I hated this choice. The only way it became a twist was by Darrow straight up lying to the reader about what was going on. He’s freaking out inside his head at this turnabout after Sevro gets shot several and Cassius escapes from the fleet with Darrow and Mustang in tow. They are at the mercy of a guy who has shown himself many times to be firmly on the side of Gold. Worse, none of the same mitigating factors from the last unreliable narration twist came into play. There’s no big time skip where Darrow has a chance to do some stuff without our knowledge. Several of his friends (and one enemy) are in on it, so he’s not even playing it that close to his chest to begin with. There was a ton of setup necessary for this ruse that the reader should have been aware of by all rights. To be fair, there is one small hint in the form of some information being passed along to Cassius that kinda gives away that something is up, but I don’t think it changes much.
The worst part though is what I already said. It’s not like Darrow is avoiding the topic this time. He’s lying to … who exactly? Himself? We’re inside his head, reading his very thoughts, and yet, he’s not thinking about how this is a ruse, somehow? This is where the twist really breaks down for me. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense in-universe, it’s that Darrow is breaking the fourth wall here. He can believably avoid thinking about certain information to keep his tells in check like in ‘Golden Son,’ but would he really make up fake emotional reactions in his head to a ‘betrayal’ that he planned out himself? Sure, he needs to react outwardly, but all this information being hidden from the reader adds up fast. And, when exactly did he have time to set all this up with Mustang and Sevro? There’s just no way to hide so much information from oneself, and yet, he does. It’s as if he knows there is a reader and is performing for us for the last several chapters of the book rather than to fool the enemy. I didn’t like this at all.
It’s tough though, because how else would you structure a good twist in the end when Darrow finally has all the cards? There’s no more unknowns to draw on, no unresolved loyalties to play out, no hidden factors … so Brown just invented some. This came at the cost of completely sacrificing Darrow’s reliability as a narrator. After that, I wasn’t as invested in the finale because I just figured well, maybe he’s lying about something else that will tie up this final fight scene no problem. I just wish this part had played out differently, even if I’m not smart enough to come up with a better option myself.
Amazing book overall, great series, but man. Did you really have to lie to me in the very end like that for the sake of the plot?
Thank you for reading,
Benjamin Hawley
Dangerous Day Job 