Morning Star

Starred review from February 8, 2016
In the excellent closing book of Brown's Red Rising trilogy, revolutionary Darrow is given a second chance to overthrow the government of a class-based future society obsessed with Ancient Rome and segregated by color-coded functions. Red-born Darrow's attempt to incite revolution while hiding among the godlike Golds, rulers of the Solar System, has failed, but it inspired an open revolt. Darrow struggles to figure out whom to trust; uniting an interplanetary uprising requires unstable and unpalatable alliances. His decisions often make him barely better than the oppressors he seeks to overthrow, blowing apart the all-too-overused trope of a plucky good-hearted band overcoming a corrupt oligarchy. Brown's vivid, first-person prose puts the reader right at the forefront of impassioned speeches, broken families, and engaging battle scenes that don't shy away from the gore as this intrastellar civil war comes to a most satisfying conclusion.

December 15, 2015
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds. This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been "carved" from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure...but a game's afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (" 'Waste 'em, ' Sevro says with a sneer" ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert's Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow's insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that "as we pretend to be brave, we become so." An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.

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Starred review from February 1, 2016
Picking up where Golden Son (2014), the second book in Brown's Red Rising trilogy, left off, the final entry opens with Darrow imprisoned by the elite Gold society he infiltrated. For Darrow, exposed as a Red and betrayed by his former cohorts, all hope seems lost until two new allies help him, and one of the Gold warriors loyal to him breaks out of prison. Darrow rejoins the revolutionary group that recruited him, the Sons of Ares, now led by his good friend, Sevro. But Sevro's warring tactics are vastly different from Darrow's, and Darrow realizes he must rebuild his confidence and retake his leadership if the rebels are to have any hope of succeeding. What follows is a page-turning epic filled with twists and turns, heartbreaks and daring gambles. In addition to a fabulously imagined universe, what makes Brown's thrilling odyssey so unique is Darrow himself. He's a hero who feels too much rather than too little, a man who not only recognizes he's not an island but knows that his strength comes from his chosen family of friends who fight alongside him. The conclusion to Brown's saga is simply stellar.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2016

Born in the mines of Mars, Darrow continues his quest to topple the ruling Gold class from his place embedded among them in this conclusion to Brown's "Red Rising" trilogy (after Golden Son), one of the most anticipated sf titles of the month. [See Prepub Alert, 7/13/15.]--MM

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2015

Brown's Red Rising, the start of a dystopian trilogy set on Mars, where a rigidly hierarchical society keeps Reds slaving beneath the soil under the pretense that they are building for a future the dominant Golds already enjoy, was a No. 1 LibraryReads pick. The follow-up, Golden Son, was in the LibraryReads top ten. Now the protagonist, a Red named Darrow who's taken on the guise of a Gold and infiltrated society's highest echelons, is ready to declare revolution.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.