This trilogy is a ride. For three books Pierce Brown flexes his mastery over pace and action via the first person perspective of his protagonist, Darrow. Through his eyes, he tells a story of oppression, violence, and uprising in a future society stratified into color coded classes.

In the first lines of Red Rising, a promise is made.

I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.

While it does feel like a ranking member of that post-The Hunger Games storytelling cohort, it still separates itself from being a pure derivative. Yes, the bulk of it is about teenagers forced into brutal, often lethal war games. Yes, there’s a sociopolitical reason for the broken status quo of its world. Do we criticize Summer blockbusters for being Summer blockbusters or do we enjoy them for surprising us while also giving us what we expect? Red Rising is nothing if not surprising as it surges through its glut of action set pieces.
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I’ve set things in motion. For once, it couldn’t have gone better. Blood trickles down my hands, sheeting between the fingers, pooling around the cuticles in a horseshoe. Knuckles flex white where there is no blood. It disgusts me, but this is what my hands were made for.

Golden Son does what any good sequel should do. It expands in scope and comes into its own from a structure and plot perspective. Its biggest triumph is that it feels like something new rather than something familiar. All while the roller coaster ride continues, the stakes soar higher, and the action actions in the most action-y way. Is Darrow a Mary Sue? Does it matter if you’re having fun?
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And I wonder, in my last moments, if the planet does not mind that we wound her surface or pillage her bounty, because she knows we silly warm things are not even a breath in her cosmic life. We have grown and spread, and will rage and die. And when all that remains of us is our steel monuments and plastic idols, her winds will whisper, her sands will shift, and she will spin on and on, forgetting about the bold, hairless apes who thought they deserved immortality.

Morning Star returns to that promise made at the very beginning of its trilogy. It’s a novel about sci-fi conflict on a grand scale. All the early seeds sewn, the twists, the betrayals—everything comes to a head as Brown knots his threads. It’s difficult to end a trilogy in a satisfying way, especially one that may have fattened its readers with the sweetest of over-the-top action delicacies. Thankfully, Morning Star delivers, for the most part.
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Everything grand is made from a series of ugly little moments. Everything worthwhile by hours of self-doubt and days of drudgery. All the works by people you and I admire sit atop a foundation of failures.

I was deliberate in my vagueness because these books are best enjoyed if you’re white-knuckling the handrails, unaware of where the track leads. I can’t recall the last time I was propelled through a narrative in such a way. Even at that pace, Brown still sneaks in moments where his prose may stop you, juxtaposing grit with beautiful imagery. As a writer, learning Red Rising was his first published novel humbled me in the most envious way.

Are there flaws? Certainly. Darrow is a protagonist of unusual and predictable capability, some of the supporting cast are reduced to archetypes, and the third book is doing a lot, for better and sometimes worse. I assume the twist near the end was meant to be surprising but the dissonance of its set up made me ask enough questions to figure it out. Blemishes, sure, but nothing ruinous.

Bottom line, I recommend the ride; its a bloodydamn blast.