nicki_j's review against another edition
4.0
Finally, a trilogy that doesn't end completely terribly. It was quite good. I was very happy with the ending - although there was one thing that bothered me. The author is good at writing scenes where the narrator knows more than the reader knows and we are as surprised as the other characters when all is revealed. As a reader, once you look back, you realize that you assumed too much and that the narrator never actually deceived you. One such scene occurs at the end of the book, but it goes beyond that. The reader is actively tricked, not in a sly way, but overtly. I think that is sloppy writing. The author could have been more clever about it. I am not sure I am explaining the concept very clearly but if you read the books, you will know what I mean.
endergke's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-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
broutt's review against another edition
5.0
"Everything is cracked, everything is stained, except the fragile moments that hang crystalline in time and make life worth living."
What an exciting series this turned out to be. After the ending of the second book I was wondering how it was possibly going to wrap everything up in the final book and I was pleasantly surprised. That's not to say everything was tied up in a neat package and everything was perfect for the galaxy because that wouldn't make sense with how these books have gone so far. I would have liked to have had more of an epilogue after the climax, even just a paragraph or two checking in on the various characters, but overall I was satisfied with how things ended.
I love that this series was never afraid to show how brutal Darrow had to be sometimes, but always managed to humanize him with the people around him. I didn't love Darrow after the first book but having finished this trilogy he's easily one of my favorite protagonists in a long time, and he's not even the best character in these books. Mustang and Sevro continued to be my favorites, with Ragnar, Cassius, and Victra doing plenty of heavy lifting. The main three antagonists were all well written with differing motivations and personalities, and all with what I thought were satisfying conclusions.
This one might take some time to process but overall I loved this series and am so happy I decided to read it. I felt like I could barely breath through huge chunks of it, never feeling like there was any filler or wasted characters. The relationships were a huge part of why I loved it so much.
My biggest complaint is the super cringey and out of place "bye Felicia" joke. That's really it.
What an exciting series this turned out to be. After the ending of the second book I was wondering how it was possibly going to wrap everything up in the final book and I was pleasantly surprised. That's not to say everything was tied up in a neat package and everything was perfect for the galaxy because that wouldn't make sense with how these books have gone so far. I would have liked to have had more of an epilogue after the climax, even just a paragraph or two checking in on the various characters, but overall I was satisfied with how things ended.
I love that this series was never afraid to show how brutal Darrow had to be sometimes, but always managed to humanize him with the people around him. I didn't love Darrow after the first book but having finished this trilogy he's easily one of my favorite protagonists in a long time, and he's not even the best character in these books. Mustang and Sevro continued to be my favorites, with Ragnar, Cassius, and Victra doing plenty of heavy lifting. The main three antagonists were all well written with differing motivations and personalities, and all with what I thought were satisfying conclusions.
This one might take some time to process but overall I loved this series and am so happy I decided to read it. I felt like I could barely breath through huge chunks of it, never feeling like there was any filler or wasted characters. The relationships were a huge part of why I loved it so much.
My biggest complaint is the super cringey and out of place "bye Felicia" joke. That's really it.
elijahf's review
adventurous
dark
hopeful
inspiring
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
4.5
mikeszoke's review against another edition
5.0
If it were possible to give this more than 5 stars, I would
ryanjamesburt's review against another edition
5.0
One of the best series I have read in a long long time. Read this series now.
xlibia's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
5.0
themuffinjoke's review against another edition
4.0
I wrestled with rating this book for a while, and finally settled on 4.5 stars. Despite fitting too neatly into the genre’s stereotypes and taking itself way too seriously, Red Rising was enjoyable. Golden Son, which upped the stakes and made more of an effort to stand out among its similarly ruthless dystopian peers, was far edgier and pulled off some really brilliant (and heartbreaking) plot moves, character development, and that insane ending. So I had high hopes for Morning Star, and I wasn’t disappointed. Well, mostly.
Pierce Brown’s strength is definitely his ability to pull off some really cray plot twists, playing characters’ intelligence and tactics against each other in a way that felt organic and dynamic as the Rising struggled with its lesser resources against the Society’s hierarchical regime. There were huge gains and huge losses on both sides, and you could always be sure that following every brief period of victory would be a big old helping of NOPE, PEOPLE DIE AND SHIT HITS THE FAN, but for every shitting on the fan you held out hope that Darrow and his crew would find a way to out-maneuver and out-crazy their enemies. Most of the fun of Morning Star was sitting back in what-the-fuckery as some plan hinted at three chapters ago suddenly unfolded and fucked shit up right when things seemed at rock-bottom for the main characters. This upsy-downsy plotline did feel a bit predictable at times, but nonetheless I was more often left breathless than I was apathetic from knowing something of this-or-that nature was going to happen. Even better, nothing felt like too much of an ass-pull—you could understand why a plan worked or didn’t work, and honestly believe in the ingenuity of the characters (except maybe Darrow, but I’ll get to him).
The writing is also quite good. Overly wrought at times? You bet. Wordy and a bit too self-conscious and heavy with metaphors that make you imagine Darrow’s internal monologue in this constantly hammy and theatrical rumble of I-Shall-Overcome-ness? Yup. But it’s undeniable that PB can turn a good phrase, has got some masterful dialogue, and his description is usually very evocative (some things are harder to visualize, like the technology and warships and the planets and the layout of the cities and stuff in low-gravity environments etc, but I’m willing to forgive that as sci-fi futuristic movie-screen mumbo-jumbo). (Also undeniable that these books were practically made for the big screen. Got my eye on that upcoming film adaptation. We’ll see how that goes.) He certainly knows how to write classic rebellion rhetoric and make it sound impressive, with a smattering of good old fashioned “Fuck you”s for good measure. The worlds themselves, somewhat sketchy and derivative in the first book, feel so much rounder, more vivid, more meticulous and detailed by the last. We get glimpses into all sorts of environments and ways of life, and it’s an incredibly immersive and atmospheric read. There’s a sense of grandeur, of style and class, of innovative momentum and authentic loyalty for one’s group, on par with the charismatic world of Hogwarts. In a word, this is a pretty badass world.
But what really made me rate this book nearly 5 stars was not the plotting, writing, or action (which is also extremely well-written and, again, cinematic as all hell), but the characters. Like, all of them.
Well, no. Not all of them. Darrow and Mustang, our main pretty-and-perfect power couple, knocked off that half-star for me. But more on them later.
All the other characters made this book for me. Darrow’s friends and family, and even their enemies on the Society-side of the war, were the reason why I put this book down in horror or started cussing up a storm or laughed really loudly.
Especially Sevro.
Sevro is my son.
Sevro made the entire series for me, from book one.
All hail the batshit crazy wonderful terrible motherfucker that is Sevro au Barca.
Also Victra. I can’t really articulate just how much I love Victra. Also Holiday, Ragnar, and the rest of Darrow’s extremely loyal (and extremely ballsy) crew. These guys, more than anything else, gave Morning Star its pulse and urgency. Credit to PB for not making the main supporting characters these personality-less cronies that bowed and whimpered to Darrow-the-Space-Jesus’s every whim and existed only to hammer into our heads just amazing and awesome and special and cool and badass and tragic Darrow is. He took the time to flesh out (insofar as the plot allowed) so much of the cast, such that I could easily imagine each character getting a book of their own, and it being just as good if not better than Darrow’s, mostly because they’re nowhere near as melodramatic as Darrow can be (except maybe Cassius. Cassius is one melodramatic Shakespearean motherfucker. Also Roque. Oh, Roque). Among some of my other personal favorites in this book were Romulus au Raa, Quicksilver, and I also have a big issue with Mickey and Matteo not being a big part of this book save in passing mention and a couple of scenes, despite being such big influences on Darrow. Yes, most of the time, these characters did exist to put Darrow's plans into action and serve as his motley coterie. Yes, I did wish that they got more opportunities to be heroes and strategists in their own rights, rather than Darrow and Mustang coming up with the brilliant plans all the time. But despite their subservience to the main protagonists, they did have agency and thoughts of their own, and you could see what the war cost them as much as you saw what it cost Darrow, and that's more than can be said for a lot of supporting characters in other novels.
I felt the love for Darrow’s people, and the connections between them felt true and authentic and malleable and fragile and intense. I didn’t like so much that for every tragic death or betrayal, Darrow took the opportunity to wax poetic (damn but the guy can wax) and act as if he understood the lost friend better than anyone else and so felt their death/betrayal/whatever more deeply than anyone else, but I understood why he did—we are in his perspective, after all—and it actually mattered when someone else he cared about kicked the bucket. It even mattered when strangers, civilians, and his enemies kicked the bucket, which is something really powerful. (Special mention should also go to I felt like I was dealing with real people, each with their own backstories, loves, fears, quirks, desires, and flaws, and while there were a great plenty of nameless faceless who-are-you's (in a story this sweeping, that’s unavoidable) at the very least you could be sure that PB took as much tender care to craft these supporting characters as he did his protagonist.
Well. Almost as much.
My feelings about Darrow are somewhat difficult to get out there. Compared to his vibrant and nuanced friends, Darrow often fell flat for me. Not because he wasn’t complicated or flawed—he was certainly both. His main flaws were typical of most male protagonists, but especially those placed in such an explicit messiah-savior-hero-leader role. Hubris, an unwillingness to let people in for fear of compromising his leadership or ability to do What Needs to Be Done, his capacity for ruthlessness, his hasty or plain old idiotic decisions that get people killed, etc etc. None of these surprised me. Darrow suffers. Darrow feels pain. Darrow regrets and doubts and wishes and reminisces and loves and hates and all that good stuff. I wouldn’t call his character one-note, and there were times when I was genuinely in tune with his thoughts and feelings. But I’d say that was mostly because I loved his friends and family and didn’t want them to die, just like he did.
Darrow’s inner dialogue very rarely felt like that of a real person. I couldn’t imagine sitting down and having a conversation with him that wouldn’t inevitably turn into him making some dramatic speech about the evils of tyranny and promising that the oppressed would rise up and blah blah blah. He chastised himself for making Eo an ideal rather than remembering her as a person, but Darrow himself reads more like an ideal, the sort of unbearably righteous hero everyone loves and falls over themselves to follow, with all the pathos of Achilles in his tent. Everything about him is dramatic, and when the drama isn’t focused on him, he sort of fades into the background as other people’s lives briefly come to the forefront. Seriously, for a Red who was supposedly struggling to adapt to life as a Gold at the beginning, Darrow talks and thinks more like a Gold than the other actual Golds he’s with, all the time . But perhaps worst of all, the military stratagem which make people follow Darrow to begin with somehow never felt … earned. This is a problem that has really stuck with me since the first book, and one of many other reviewers have noted. Darrow didn’t feel like he earned all that tactical and military knowledge (he literally got fed most of his knowledge about Gold culture/history/etc through a tube or whatever, so yeah). But when he’d make this splendid tactical move or that counterattack that would send the opponent reeling, I’d be sitting here like, Okay, but where did this awesome strategizing even come from? Maybe I need to go back and read the first two books, since it’s been a while and maybe Darrow’s prowess has already been explained and justified by the time we get to Morning Star, but I seriously felt like the role of brilliant commander and rebel hero was the real character, and the name of “Darrow” and his Red heritage just slapped on there for trimmings. Darrow is the most stock character of all the cast, even more so than the villains who are usually the most stereotyped and tropey. Which is really a shame, because I’d devour this trilogy all over again otherwise. But I just can’t handle Darrow’s Hamlet-esque inner dialogue for another three books. I won’t lie, Darrow is a magnetic character, and he’s nothing if not thoughtful. About everything. I enjoy a character who thinks deeply about the motivations and lives of other people as well as themselves. But something was missing from Darrow, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Hopefully PB will figure it out as he pens his next series.
And finally, Mustang. Lots of people are conflicted about Mustang—she seems to be a hit-or-miss character for many readers. I absolutely love the traits she possesses—a brilliant tactical mind, an understanding of people’s inner psychology, a genuine love for her family, a hope for a better and more equitable future, and the capacity to unapologetically lie and manipulate and scheme to get her way. Mustang is without a doubt the smartest character in the series, besides maybe the Jackal, but So yes, yes, yes. I’m all on board. If she had her own book, I’d devour it in a heartbeat. But take all of these awesome traits together, and you get … well, what? A whole person, or an amalgamation of awesome?
I never really connected with Mustang, on any level. Maybe it was because it was impossible to shake off the label of Darrow’s Love Interest once it had been slapped on her oh-so-perfect forehead. Maybe it was because it felt like PB was deliberately trying to a) create a contrast to Eo's dreamy, shortsighted idealism and make Mustang worthy of Darrow’s Awesome Space Jesus-ness, and b) make Mustang the opposite of all the things we usually fault female characters for, like being a ditzy damsel in distress or giving everything up for her lover or whatever. Yes, I get it, Mustang is the epitome of a badass genius whom Darrow needs to be worthy of. But Mustang herself fell flat for much the same reasons Darrow did, and even more so because we don’t get access to her inner world. She’s another perfect paragon of what Society needs to be, and what Darrow needs to heal after losing Eo—an ideal, just like Darrow himself. And for that reason, I didn’t love her as much as I wanted to. Which makes me wonder whether we as readers ask too much of leading female characters—or am I just wanting the same balance of relatability, complexity, idiosyncrasy, flaws and positive, empowering traits that seem to be written so much more easily for male characters? I don’t know.
I do know that I really did love the other characters in this book, and the book as a whole. It made a satisfying ending to an extremely impressive series.
Pierce Brown’s strength is definitely his ability to pull off some really cray plot twists, playing characters’ intelligence and tactics against each other in a way that felt organic and dynamic as the Rising struggled with its lesser resources against the Society’s hierarchical regime. There were huge gains and huge losses on both sides, and you could always be sure that following every brief period of victory would be a big old helping of NOPE, PEOPLE DIE AND SHIT HITS THE FAN, but for every shitting on the fan you held out hope that Darrow and his crew would find a way to out-maneuver and out-crazy their enemies. Most of the fun of Morning Star was sitting back in what-the-fuckery as some plan hinted at three chapters ago suddenly unfolded and fucked shit up right when things seemed at rock-bottom for the main characters. This upsy-downsy plotline did feel a bit predictable at times, but nonetheless I was more often left breathless than I was apathetic from knowing something of this-or-that nature was going to happen. Even better, nothing felt like too much of an ass-pull—you could understand why a plan worked or didn’t work, and honestly believe in the ingenuity of the characters (except maybe Darrow, but I’ll get to him).
The writing is also quite good. Overly wrought at times? You bet. Wordy and a bit too self-conscious and heavy with metaphors that make you imagine Darrow’s internal monologue in this constantly hammy and theatrical rumble of I-Shall-Overcome-ness? Yup. But it’s undeniable that PB can turn a good phrase, has got some masterful dialogue, and his description is usually very evocative (some things are harder to visualize, like the technology and warships and the planets and the layout of the cities and stuff in low-gravity environments etc, but I’m willing to forgive that as sci-fi futuristic movie-screen mumbo-jumbo). (Also undeniable that these books were practically made for the big screen. Got my eye on that upcoming film adaptation. We’ll see how that goes.) He certainly knows how to write classic rebellion rhetoric and make it sound impressive, with a smattering of good old fashioned “Fuck you”s for good measure. The worlds themselves, somewhat sketchy and derivative in the first book, feel so much rounder, more vivid, more meticulous and detailed by the last. We get glimpses into all sorts of environments and ways of life, and it’s an incredibly immersive and atmospheric read. There’s a sense of grandeur, of style and class, of innovative momentum and authentic loyalty for one’s group, on par with the charismatic world of Hogwarts. In a word, this is a pretty badass world.
But what really made me rate this book nearly 5 stars was not the plotting, writing, or action (which is also extremely well-written and, again, cinematic as all hell), but the characters. Like, all of them.
Well, no. Not all of them. Darrow and Mustang, our main pretty-and-perfect power couple, knocked off that half-star for me. But more on them later.
All the other characters made this book for me. Darrow’s friends and family, and even their enemies on the Society-side of the war, were the reason why I put this book down in horror or started cussing up a storm or laughed really loudly.
Especially Sevro.
Sevro is my son.
Sevro made the entire series for me, from book one.
All hail the batshit crazy wonderful terrible motherfucker that is Sevro au Barca.
Also Victra. I can’t really articulate just how much I love Victra.
Spoiler
Though I do question the realism of Sevro and Victra getting married. I believed their relationship for the most part, although I do wish there had been more build-up and chemistry rather than PB very obviously shipping them together for their complementary personalities and then making it happen, but knowing those characters as well as we do, I just can't see either of them committing so easily to that kind of official recognition of their relationship, and overcoming so quickly the inner demons that would make it difficult for them to do so. The fact that I totally shipped them made the cheapness of the payoff even more disappointing.Spoiler
Sefi the Quiet. (Good Lord, Sefi the Motherfucking Quiet.)I felt the love for Darrow’s people, and the connections between them felt true and authentic and malleable and fragile and intense. I didn’t like so much that for every tragic death or betrayal, Darrow took the opportunity to wax poetic (damn but the guy can wax) and act as if he understood the lost friend better than anyone else and so felt their death/betrayal/whatever more deeply than anyone else, but I understood why he did—we are in his perspective, after all—and it actually mattered when someone else he cared about kicked the bucket. It even mattered when strangers, civilians, and his enemies kicked the bucket, which is something really powerful. (Special mention should also go to
Spoiler
the Jackal - yes, I hated his guts, but he's one of the best antagonists I've read in a while. More than a match for our protags at every turn, stylish and terrifying by turns, and as nuanced as Darrow, Mustang, or any of the rest of the crew. I felt bad for the Jackal as often as I wanted to see the little shit get what was coming to him. Wish I could say as much for Aja, who I just hated with all my being, but even she had a semblance of humanity at the end.)Well. Almost as much.
My feelings about Darrow are somewhat difficult to get out there. Compared to his vibrant and nuanced friends, Darrow often fell flat for me. Not because he wasn’t complicated or flawed—he was certainly both. His main flaws were typical of most male protagonists, but especially those placed in such an explicit messiah-savior-hero-leader role. Hubris, an unwillingness to let people in for fear of compromising his leadership or ability to do What Needs to Be Done, his capacity for ruthlessness, his hasty or plain old idiotic decisions that get people killed, etc etc. None of these surprised me. Darrow suffers. Darrow feels pain. Darrow regrets and doubts and wishes and reminisces and loves and hates and all that good stuff. I wouldn’t call his character one-note, and there were times when I was genuinely in tune with his thoughts and feelings. But I’d say that was mostly because I loved his friends and family and didn’t want them to die, just like he did.
Darrow’s inner dialogue very rarely felt like that of a real person. I couldn’t imagine sitting down and having a conversation with him that wouldn’t inevitably turn into him making some dramatic speech about the evils of tyranny and promising that the oppressed would rise up and blah blah blah. He chastised himself for making Eo an ideal rather than remembering her as a person, but Darrow himself reads more like an ideal, the sort of unbearably righteous hero everyone loves and falls over themselves to follow, with all the pathos of Achilles in his tent. Everything about him is dramatic, and when the drama isn’t focused on him, he sort of fades into the background as other people’s lives briefly come to the forefront. Seriously, for a Red who was supposedly struggling to adapt to life as a Gold at the beginning, Darrow talks and thinks more like a Gold than the other actual Golds he’s with, all the time . But perhaps worst of all, the military stratagem which make people follow Darrow to begin with somehow never felt … earned. This is a problem that has really stuck with me since the first book, and one of many other reviewers have noted. Darrow didn’t feel like he earned all that tactical and military knowledge (he literally got fed most of his knowledge about Gold culture/history/etc through a tube or whatever, so yeah). But when he’d make this splendid tactical move or that counterattack that would send the opponent reeling, I’d be sitting here like, Okay, but where did this awesome strategizing even come from? Maybe I need to go back and read the first two books, since it’s been a while and maybe Darrow’s prowess has already been explained and justified by the time we get to Morning Star, but I seriously felt like the role of brilliant commander and rebel hero was the real character, and the name of “Darrow” and his Red heritage just slapped on there for trimmings. Darrow is the most stock character of all the cast, even more so than the villains who are usually the most stereotyped and tropey. Which is really a shame, because I’d devour this trilogy all over again otherwise. But I just can’t handle Darrow’s Hamlet-esque inner dialogue for another three books. I won’t lie, Darrow is a magnetic character, and he’s nothing if not thoughtful. About everything. I enjoy a character who thinks deeply about the motivations and lives of other people as well as themselves. But something was missing from Darrow, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Hopefully PB will figure it out as he pens his next series.
And finally, Mustang. Lots of people are conflicted about Mustang—she seems to be a hit-or-miss character for many readers. I absolutely love the traits she possesses—a brilliant tactical mind, an understanding of people’s inner psychology, a genuine love for her family, a hope for a better and more equitable future, and the capacity to unapologetically lie and manipulate and scheme to get her way. Mustang is without a doubt the smartest character in the series, besides maybe the Jackal, but
Spoiler
even he succumbs to her machinations in the end.I never really connected with Mustang, on any level. Maybe it was because it was impossible to shake off the label of Darrow’s Love Interest once it had been slapped on her oh-so-perfect forehead. Maybe it was because it felt like PB was deliberately trying to a) create a contrast to Eo's dreamy, shortsighted idealism and make Mustang worthy of Darrow’s Awesome Space Jesus-ness, and b) make Mustang the opposite of all the things we usually fault female characters for, like being a ditzy damsel in distress or giving everything up for her lover or whatever. Yes, I get it, Mustang is the epitome of a badass genius whom Darrow needs to be worthy of.
Spoiler
And I personally understand her desire to “test” Darrow and make sure he was worthy of being father to her child. Besides the practicality of keeping it a secret—they are at war, and the claim that Darrow can’t afford that profound a distraction is debatable, but not unreasonable—Mustang does have a right to determine whether or not Darrow can, when all is said and done, shed his mantle of bloodstained war hero to be a good father to their child. Is the kid as much Darrow’s child as it is Mustang’s? Of course. But at the end of the day, Mustang was putting the child’s potential for a good life over the morality of telling Darrow the truth, and I think that is completely in line with her personality and her values, and valid as a mother’s decision.I do know that I really did love the other characters in this book, and the book as a whole. It made a satisfying ending to an extremely impressive series.
mel_towns's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-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? It's complicated
4.0
artsymusings's review against another edition
5.0
'If the need arises I've got myself a psychotic Goblin-sized fighter jet.' -
Guessing the whole crazy af fucking plan half a moment after it began did nothingnothingnothing to lessen the intensity of it. If I wasn't so fucking emotionally drained right now, I would start rereading the series from the beginning.
FUCKING FUCK THIS BOOK IS GOOD.
Spoiler
HELLO, YOU CANNOT FUCKING KILL THE GOBLIN NOT AFTER THE HANGING HIMSELF SHIT HE PULLED. I did believe it for half a second, though (WORST HALF A SECOND EVER) and then I had to stop and take a fucking breath.Guessing the whole crazy af fucking plan half a moment after it began did nothingnothingnothing to lessen the intensity of it. If I wasn't so fucking emotionally drained right now, I would start rereading the series from the beginning.
FUCKING FUCK THIS BOOK IS GOOD.