Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - Golden Son

Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Golden Son by Pierce Brown

11 reviews

hilkerd's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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tblakehudson's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

My spoiler free review is this: just wait til the end. Don’t make any final judgements until the end of the book.

The spoiler review: I really have to admit I was thrown. The entirety of the book I kept having this feeling that each step was a bit predictable knowing what we know. I now see why: the rug was completely pulled out from under us.

The twists revealed in Golden Son really make me want to go back and read the first book and re-analyze the characters there, and I think that’s an achievement in itself. Fitchner as Ares I think is one of my favorite parts of this series, and Sevro foreshadowing Roque so early on in the book I think is a perfect example of hiding in plain sight.

That being said, I do have some small concerns. Throughout the whole book I can’t help but think everything is too easy for Darrow. Maybe that’s the point given the final twist, but still, I feel like there’s basically nothing he can’t do throughout the whole story. I’m curious to see how much of this is due to the Jackal’s influence in the next book. Hopefully it means Darrow was being played the entire time, to give some limitation to his endless achievements. Otherwise, Darrow feels a little too much like he’s trying to be Katniss but is falling more to the shallow profile of Triss in Divergent. By this I mean, even though the author establishes a few other players that should be better than the MC in certain ways (Lorn, Ares, etc.) they’re all dead by the end, so the MC kinda HAS to play the hero instead of developing into it further. I’m optimistic about the next book though and looking forward to reading it.

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eefmaoam's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was a wild ride and I’m truly shocked by the ending, which is not something a lot of books do to me.

Even though the story started out a bit slower than I expected it to, because of it being a sequel, it really *started going down* after ~20% and just kept accelerating until the final chapter. Even though there’s some time between this story and the first book, the character and story development feels natural and not too quick (which it truly an accomplishment with this fast paced of a plot).

Also, the entire Greaco-Roman mythology analogy starts to pay off, which is pretty exciting for me. I was a bit worried and almost annoyed by it in the first book, but now I see why Brown choose to really develop it in the first place *relieved classists sigh*.

I remember being pretty critical of some fore shadowing that felt more like predictability without pay-off in the first part, that’s completely gone now. Once again mentioning that phenomenal ending: I could see part of it coming (

it was clear to me Roque was going roque (joke joke) after the conversation they had after the *big battle*, I could also see the Jackel playing a part in it. But that ending?? That ending?????

), but woah was it clear Brown meant to do some *fore shadowing* this time.

Over all this story felt like a more mature, darker and intenser sequel than I would have expected after reading the first part. While writing this review I’m almost wondering why I don’t rate this as a 5-star read, but that honestly comes down to vibes and thinking the 3th instalment might even be better and truly deserving of 5 starts. It certainly has nothing to do with the quality of this book, because bloodydamn, this is a good book.

On to the next one.

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