Book-Thirsty Thursday: Iron Gold, Pierce Brown

Pierce Brown’s Iron Gold ends up being perhaps his best effort since Red Rising, and for a book that expands a trilogy, that’s an impressive feat.

It’s difficult for me to explain the experience I had way back when reading Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, other than to say it was a book that I tore through. (Not that I don’t do that with a lot of books, but for me to remember how quickly I went through it so many years later is slightly more impressive.) And this isn’t to say that Golden Son and Morning Star weren’t good, but I didn’t have the same experience. This is to say, however, that having picked up and read the new fourth book in the no-longer-a-trilogy, Iron Gold, it seems that Brown has gotten some of the magic back.

It seems that picking up 10 years later was just what the series needed. We’re still right there with Darrow of Lykos, now married to Virginia au Augustus and with their son, Pax, but the world is not the same — because, as the book itself says very early on, there have been 10 years of war.

In moving everyone forward, Brown gets to expose new characteristics and open up new problems for Darrow, Sevro, Virginia and other favorite characters from the first three books. For the most part, this works exceptionally well. We know these characters for their ferocity and their adaptability. Now, most of them are parents. (Sevro has three girls and a baby on the way!) And Brown does quite a bit of work with the idea of what children of great people — legends, perhaps — inherit at the end of the day.

But it’s not just Darrow’s storyline that has this theme at heart, and I’d argue perhaps that the sections narrated by Lysander au Lune are just as strong as Darrow’s. Not only does he have the same issue threading through his narrative, but he provides a very different perspective on the events that have shaped this world so far, and the events that continue to shape the world. That is not to be discounted at all.

At first, the outlying chapters belong to Lyria of Lagalos and Ephraim ti Horn — the latter in particular. But eventually, slowly, they weave into the greater narrative. Perhaps that’s this book’s greatest weakness — it does take a while for those bits to really tie in to the present story at large. Lyria’s opening chapters, though, are harrowing since they show the results of the war, and I applaud Brown for including them.

Ultimately, I suppose the word I’d use for Iron Gold is that it is a more mature book, which is saying something considering the ridiculous activities that these characters have gotten up to in the first three books. Although Brown has never shied away from inspecting serious consequences, it’s not often that a follow-up like this will actually go there in the sense of not just continuing the story, but upping the ante and letting the consequences of the original story play out. It’s a difficult line to walk, and for the most part, Brown does it.

If you’ve not read the original trilogy in a while, though, it might not hurt to at least skim through them again before picking Iron Gold up. Even with the Dramatis Personae in hand, it’s not a bad idea to refresh yourself.

Next: 30 books to read in the first half of 2018

Still, it’s a very solid book — and, in this reviewer’s opinion, it’s flat-out his best since Red Rising itself.