The pros and cons of continuing a book trilogy like Red Rising, and how Iron Gold struggles to impress despite it's narrative choices being necessary.
I want to start this by saying I wasn’t fully upset with how Iron Gold played out. For what it’s worth, it’s a pretty solid continuation of the Red Rising trilogy. However, if this book was a standalone novel, I don’t think I would’ve given it the time of day.
There are many pros to reading Iron Gold, and frankly if you’ve read the Red Rising trilogy already, I think you should give Iron Gold a shot. It has all of the same beloved characters from the previous books, in the same setting, so if you love the world building of Red Rising, Iron Gold follows suit to a T. However, the pacing and multiple POVs of this novel make it hard to recommend.
Of course, since I’ll be talking about the fourth book in a series, I will be spoiling this book and parts of the rest of the trilogy, so I highly recommend you read the Red Rising trilogy before reading this essay. This post is for those of you who’ve been debating about continuing on to the second trilogy of books, and want to know what happens with spoilers. Or, y’know, if you’ve already read Iron Gold and want to hear another opinion.
But first, lemme quick shill my services to y’all—totally not to act as a barrier for people who don’t want to be spoiled, no sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
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Alright, have the non-spoiler crowd left? Yeah? Cool, let’s continue.
Red Rising and Beyond: A Decade After the Rising
As someone who really enjoyed the Red Rising trilogy, it’s easy to imagine wanting to read on to find out what happens next. I mean, Morning Star practically ends on a cliff hanger where the characters look out to the horizon and ponder the next stages of their seemingly never-ending war. With the birth of Pax and the end of the Society, one can only wonder where the series will go.
Of course, with such high stakes, Darrow and company’s new Republic has a hard time starting up and stabilizing itself. This is true going into Iron Gold, as the novel is set a decade after the events of Morning Star.
This is probably the best way to continue the plot line of a rebellion.
In a lot of dystopian/rebellion novels, you’re often left at the end of the rebellion where the rebels win and a whole slew of possibilities before them. A lot of the time, the author ends it here on a high note, expressing the importance of rebelling against an authoritarian regime and leaving it at that. The problem is, when you have to craft an entire government by yourself, you’re gonna fumble and fall back on what is familiar, because some people aren’t going to want to make such drastic changes so quickly. You have to listen to everyone’s issues, everyone’s complaints, everyone’s problems, and in a society like The Society, that means untangling multiple layers of superiority complexes, the perceived comfort of the previous society, and hoping people aren’t mad at you for throwing millions of young people at a war they can’t see the benefit of.
Essentially, starting an entirely new government is hard, and calming the waters of distrust and surety in a society of people is even harder.
That’s what Iron Gold does best. It doesn’t live in a fantasy world where everything is magically better because the heroes won in the end. There’s grief and horrors to war and rebellion that cannot be solved in a year or two. Or ten, in that matter.
Iron Gold starts by Darrow directly disobeying the orders of the Sovereign. It starts by showing you everything that is wrong, and how it continues to be wrong, despite how many years it’s been, because mindset and perception is hard to change.
Now, I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I really understand the intricacies of the politics in Iron Gold. Nonetheless, I like how Pierce Brown brings the Red Rising series back by immediately thrusting the reader into the chaos of government and war. I feel like if Iron Gold picked up directly where Morning Star ended, the levity of the situation for the Republic wouldn’t have been as interesting or thought-provoking. Like, showing us what happened in the first few years of the Republic, not that much would be alarming or that far out of left field. Showing us what’s going on after ten years of the Republic, and the cracks on the surface seem much more dire.
So much can happen in a decade, and so much did.
However, jumping a decade in time does mean that the scenarios of the world as we knew it in the Red Rising trilogy is significantly different. The Society no longer exists, but the people still do, and the HighColor’s bigotries and superiority complexes continues to affect the Republic just as much as it did in the Society, if not more. Now, the oppressors are aware that they were oppressing those lower to them, which only makes their oppression more self-righteous in Iron Gold. They’re doing it purposefully now, in ways that they absentmindedly did in the Society, specifically because of how petty they are about the Rising.
This means we have to learn and understand the interconnections between the different Colors all over again in Iron Gold, just as we had to in Red Rising. Which means, a lot of exposition, to the point that it’s almost overwhelming.
We have to learn how HighColors interact with the MidColors and the LowColors, how some still hold the same types of jobs that they held before the Rising, and how only a few have surpassed the expectation of their Color. We have to learn who supports the Sovereign, who supports the Vox Populous, who supports the Ash Lord and his conservative partners, what’s going on with the Rim after the docks were destroyed, and all other concerning parties like the Red Hand and the Syndicate, as well as how everyone generally feels about each party and what perspectives are considered as “unfitting” (i.e. not believing in the Sovereign’s message as a Red around people in the higher wards).
Because of this, the pacing takes a hit. And, frankly, introducing three new POVs probably doesn’t help this pacing issue.
Multiple POVs Outside of Darrow
Not only are we following Darrow’s perspective, seeing what happens to him after launching an Iron Rain in direct opposition to the Sovereign’s orders, but we are also introduced to three new characters, where we have to learn about their histories and their problems as well.
Well, actually, three of the POVs are characters we were already aware of in the Red Rising trilogy, and one is an entirely new character. Nonetheless, these are characters who weren’t as relevant in the Red Rising trilogy getting POVs. And thus, we get to follow characters outside of Darrow.
This, I think, is the best choice Pierce Brown could’ve chosen for following up the Red Rising trilogy. We not only get to see how Darrow is struggling with keeping up the Rising, but how the Rising affects other characters and other lives. The Rising is so much more than a rebellion led by Darrow; it’s the living, waking livelihoods of the entire populace of the Republic. They exist within it, and are shaped by it, and younger generations aren’t fully aware of what happened in it, other than what they know of their current reality. It makes for really interesting commentary on what Darrow did wrong, and for once, you can really see how different Darrow’s brain works in comparison to other characters. Which, frankly, is very important in this new Society because of how many moving parts and different parties are involved in the overarching story of Iron Gold.
In general, there are a lot more moving parts happening in Iron Gold compared to Red Rising, which makes the multiple POVs helpful in understanding all of these plot lines. Iron Gold, in general, has a lot more going on because there isn’t a solitary “hero” and solitary “villain” anymore. It branches off and follows multiple people because there are many different players in this larger game at stake. The problem is, some of these POVs are more interesting than others. Some of these POVs really struggle to keep the attention of the reader, which makes it a slog to get through those chapters. And shockingly, one of those struggle POVs is Darrow’s.
Getting to see perspectives outside of Darrow’s enlightens just how hard the weight of the Rising rests on his shoulders, how much expectation pressures him into ultimately choosing to escape Lune to chase after the Ash Lord by himself. Like, you can see how desperate he is to end the war in how he frees Apollonius from Deepgrave, one of his sworn enemies, to take along to Venus in order to kill Magnus au Grimmus, a common enemy between the two. Darrow would rather risk the lives of his Howlers by freeing a psychopathic murderer in order to have a better chance against the Ash Lord. It’s a gamble he takes because he’s trying to predict the actions of multiple parties, and despite all of that, he’s still wrong. He still screws up. Since we can see so many other POVs, it’s easier to pick apart Darrow’s narrative, and the flaws in his choices become much more apparent. Sevro is shown multiple times throughout Darrow’s chapters telling Darrow that his choices might not be the best option, and Darrow is, conversely, shown believing that there is not other option.
So, one almost has to question if Darrow has a savior-complex, that he has to be the one to end the war, because he’s the one that started it. Because he chose this path, he has to see it through, and in some twisted fashion, it is literally eating himself from within. I don’t know if this complexity would be as apparent if we didn’t get to see perspectives like Lyria and Ephraim, who both hate how the Republic is running things and how the Rising is playing out.
Despite this, Darrow’s POV lacks the pacing that a lot of the other POVs have. His POV is much slower than the others, making it hard to read, especially when most of what’s happening to him is directing a group of people to fight this party and so and so forth. And, I’ll be honest, his self-loathing as a bad father and hatred for the Ash Lord gets kind of annoying to read.
I think, for that reason, balancing the rest of the story with the other POVs makes the reading experience just a little bit better paced.
But, with so many POVs, it’s hard to keep up with a common plot line that threads them all together. Often, I found myself asking why we were following this particular POV over another. In many cases, what we learned in one POV didn’t really make much difference in the following POV’s chapters. This is especially true in the beginning, where every character is given the same number of chapters in a specific order.
It’s hard to keep a solid pace throughout the book when you’re being jostled between multiple characters with multiple different inner voices, multiple different goals and aspirations, and multiple different settings. Spending too much time in one setting often made it harder to return to other settings, fumbling the pacing for a few paragraphs or for a whole POV chapter at times.
To be honest, the most egregious POV of them all was Lysander’s POV, which tossed us all the way over to the Rim for a couple of chapters at a time. Not that what was happening in the Rim was particularly boring, far from it, but it was so far removed from the main plot points of the Core and Lune—compared to the other POVs—that it felt jarring to reach the end of one POV and get pushed to the complete opposite side of the Solar System.
Interconnections Between POVs
Granted, there are some interesting interconnections between the POVs that can make for enjoyable sequencing.
Fundamentally, all of the POVs are struggling with very similar layers of grief and resentment, though that resentment is directed towards various different people. Underneath, they are all the same. How they choose to react and interact with the world due to that grief differs vastly, and I think that’s what makes the multiple POVs in Iron Gold so unique.
Darrow has lost a lot in the war. Not only has he lost a lot of his friends on a literal level, like Ragnar, Pax (prime), and various Howlers, he has lost the support and respect of people he greatly cares for, like Sefi and to some extent, Mustang and his child, Pax. In such a position, Darrow chooses to drown himself in the war instead of having to face that reality, because he believes that ending the war would give him the time he’s lost to regain the trust in those still alive. Instead of owning up to his mistakes and admitting that he might have been wrong in the various choices he made up to this point, he burrows his head further into his choices and commits himself to the war effort wherever that may take him, which ends up losing the trust of Sevro, his longest and truest supporter. In his grief, he doubles down in his convictions.
Ephraim lost Trigg, which irrevocably changed his relationship with Trigg’s sister, Holiday. He creates his thieving group with Volga, Dano, and Cyra, keeping to himself without ever considering these people as friends, because making that connection and inevitably losing them would just hurt more. Cyra ends up selling information about Ephraim to the Syndicate behind his back, which proves his distrust of these people to be valid. However, this same distrust ends up biting him in the back with Volga. Volga wants to befriend Ephraim, and in his wallowing, ends up losing her because of his trust issues. He keeps himself at a distance, which makes it impossible for Volga, or even Holiday, to get closer or even get a chance to help him. In the end, he pushes everyone away and feels more miserable and more alone, moreso than ever before. In his grief, he pushes everyone away in hopes that being left alone for once would allow him reprieve.
Lysander lost his grandmother and mother-like figure in Aja, after already losing his mother and father previously. He only has Cassius and Pytha now. His relationship is already fraught with Cassius because he sees him as someone who betrayed his Color, killing Lysander’s family in order to help Darrow, someone who Lysander sees as a terrorist. Despite this, Cassius also saved Lysander, keeping him alive and safe for the last decade of his life, and thus feels a weird connection to Cassius. He feels as though he owes Cassius something, tied together out of circumstance rather than actual trust and support. Because of this, Lysander at 20 doesn’t feel the need to listen to Cassius even when Cassius is right, and completely shifts the course of their future by trying to save a random Gold girl from death instead of leaving with Cassius. He continues to justify his choices in his head as “for the good of Gold,” which actively upsets Cassius who has spent the last ten years trying to unravel the brainwashing of Color Order that Octavia and Aja inflicted upon him. In the end, he loses Cassius, too, out of his self-righteousness and belief that he, alone, can bring the Rim and Core Gold back together and end the war. In his grief, he doubles down on his convictions like Darrow, but falls back on the comfortable thought-processes that he grew up learning, instead of challenging those beliefs.
And in the first act of the novel, Lyria lost her family. After already losing her mother, and mentally losing her father, Lyria watches as the Red Hand comes down and wrecks havoc across her encampment, indiscriminately murdering her younger brother, her elder sister, her father, and her elder sister’s children. She blames herself for their deaths, but for Liam’s (her nephew) sake, she urges the Telemanus’ to bring her to Lune with them in hopes for a better future for Liam. When Ephraim’s attack finally goes off, Lyria can only blame herself for trusting him, and believes that no one would believe her connection to him after being kept alive. But, instead of letting that self-pity consume her, she decides to go to the Sovereign about what happened anyway, despite knowing that she seems like an accomplice, because she knows that running away would only make life harder for Liam. In her grief, she focuses solely on trying to make her nephew’s life better, even when she believes her own life is already soiled.
In this, you can see how necessary these POVs are in telling the story of Iron Gold. You can see how important it is to share the narrative outside of just Darrow’s because the Rising isn’t just Darrow anymore; it’s so much more. And everyone is being affected by it. Everyone is struggling with their own form of grief. But, in doing so, everyone’s choices shift how the narrative can progress from this point on. The narrative is no longer a singular story told through the lens of one guy. It couldn’t be. It wouldn’t encompass enough of the narrative. These choices force the characters into the limelight of the novel, and thus cannot be ignored without some aspect of the narrative sounding limited.
The Effect? Necessary But Strange Pacing
As such, the inevitable effect of putting four POVs into the narrative, as well as pushing the story ten years into the future, creates a strangely paced story. Some parts fly by and some parts drag, but ultimately, given the circumstances of the novel, it feels necessary.
In the end, I can’t say that Iron Gold was a particularly bad book in the series. Its flaws are inevitable given the aforementioned circumstances, and though it’s pacing specifically makes it not my favorite book in the series, it’s not a bad book by any measure. Even when it drags, there’s still the essence of strong storytelling occurring. There are reasons for why narrative choices were made, why certain scenes happen, why certain conversations happen, and ultimately, everything progresses the story.
For this reason, I can’t be mad at the multiple POVs and slow pacing. I really can’t, because I can see why it had to be that way.
Still, I’m not super impressed by the way the narrative was told. I think some things could’ve been tightened up better, more polished. One scene that still irks me is the prison escape. I don’t think I felt the pressure of the situation really instilled within me while reading. Here’s this impenetrable prison none have ever been able to break into or break out of, and Darrow’s team infiltrates with ease. They spend the majority of the middle bits of the story in this prison trying to free Apollonius, and there’s no real conflict. They get in, they get out, and everything’s chill.
I also didn’t really see the purpose behind Lyria’s POV for the majority of the book. A lot of what was happening to Lyria was also happening to Ephraim, like with the attack on the Telemanus’ ship and kidnapping the kids, even going to the Syndicate to save the kids. These are events that are shared between Lyria and Ephraim’s POVs, but Lyria doesn’t do anything particularly of interest for most of her POV chapters to warrant her own POV compared to Ephraim. Hell, the beginning of her escape from being kidnapped was mentioned in passing in Ephraim’s POV. I do get why Lyria got her own POV, specifically with her working with the Sovereign to free the kids, but this is like one instance out of the entirety of the novel. I just don’t know if it’s worth dedicating an entire POV for Lyria when most of her events are just repeated in Ephraim’s chapters.
For all of these reasons, I can only rate Iron Gold a 7.5/10. It’s still a good score, by all accounts, just not as good as my ratings for the original trilogy. Which, I guess is the best way to describe Iron Gold: good, but not as good as the original trilogy.
And that’s about it! I had intended on writing some kind of review for the Red Rising trilogy, but I just never could figure what to write about. It was a phenomenal series, definitely worth picking up, but like, I wasn’t obsessed with it to a degree where I could ramble about it in a review/analysis like this.
Iron Gold, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. When I finished it, I immediately felt compelled to write about it. What an odd book; complaining about this book is one thing, finding the ways in which it excels in storytelling despite my complaints is another.
Have you read Iron Gold? How did you feel about it? Did it live up to your expectations, or did it falter? Lemme know in the comments below!
Also! I want to reiterate that my new upload schedule will take full affect starting now! It was already in affect, but my schedule somehow worked out so that I had a new upload on a weekly basis still. This time, I won’t have a new post until 3/18, so like a full 14 days from now. The post on 3/18 will be my review on Metroid Prime 3, so stay tuned for that!
And as always, see you next time!
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