But Morning Star is still suffering from a bit of sequel-itis at this point, in that it sometimes seems like every other sentence is Darrow recalling some past character that we need to get caught up with, all of which end up reading like '. There's a prison break, a rescue, joyous reunions. And while he might think his end has finally come, we, as readers, know that rescue must be on its way.Īnd, eventually, it does come. He lies there like a lump feeling sorry for himself, remembering the good ol' days and everyone who done him wrong. But while Zelazny somehow made that prison cell one of the best parts of the series, Brown.

Roger Zelazny did it right in the middle of the first half of his Amber decalogy (the only half that matters), blinding his narrator and throwing him into a cell where he could think back on all that had led him to this sorry state. He's been beaten, tortured, revealed as an impostor in his high-caste world and then thrown into solitary, in a hole so small that he can do nothing but curl into a ball, talk to himself and weep.Ĭonveniently, most of what he talks about are the events of the past two books - which, as a writer, is precisely why you throw your main man into solitary in the first place. It starts badly by almost any measure: Betrayed at the end of the last book, Golden Son, and with all his victories turned to ash, Darrow begins Morning Star imprisoned. And Brown's commitment to showing it all is both one of the beautiful strengths and most annoying failures of the third and final book in the series, Morning Star.

Keeping together all the details of a massive, system-wide war with dozens of competing factions isn't impossible, it's just very, very hard. He got to be the clean and bright hero, never having to face the ugly realities of upsetting a massive bureaucracy, destroying vital infrastructure and all the other petty inconveniences that come with a war.īut Darrow, the hero of Pierce Brown's Red Rising trilogy doesn't get that hall pass. No, if you're Luke, all you gotta do is show up every once in a while, blow up a Death Star or have a lightsaber duel with your weird dad. The best thing Luke Skywalker had going for him in the original trilogy was that he never had to worry about who was going to feed the war orphans left behind by the rebellion, or rebuild trashed moisture farms. Time Machine 'Golden Son' Is Space Opera That Doesn't Forget The Opera

Morning Star by Pierce Brown