ISBN: 978-0425285916
Publisher/date: Del Rey; Illustrated edition (January 16, 2018)
Genre: Dystopian Sci-fi
Series: Red Rising Saga
Rating: T for violence
War eats the victors last.
I maintain that the first trilogy is the YA trilogy and the second is the mature version.
Darrow and Mustang are now 33. She is Sovereign and he is her sword. And they have all the problems that come with being not only the rulers of a divided social system they have spent years fighting to repair, but also the personal issues of being a public face all the time and their marriage suffering the consequences. It's serious real talk.
The Senate is full of your typical senators, some there for the people, and some for themselves, but all fighting and refusing to come to an agreement, stabbing each other in the back - and the front. Typical politics where nothing gets done.
Darrow has spent years fighting for the freedom of the lower colors on the inner planets. But everyone is sick of war. Darrow suffers from Iron Man syndrome - where he believes that he must save everyone and that he is the only one who can do it. He chooses to do something against the Senate and ends up making things significantly worse for the republic.
We moved to a multiple POV story, and I personally enjoy those. Not at first of course, it's jarring in the first couple of chapters, but I promise that you will become personally vested into each of these characters.
So I'm not going to lie, this was the hardest for me to read out of the whole damn series. It was very painful, mainly because there wasn't the typical rollercoaster of emotions you get in epic fantasy - the ups and downs that come from varying feelings of hope and hopelessness. No, this book stays firmly in the hopelessness feeling. I can't call it a drag, I devoured this book like a dog with a raw steak he isn't supposed to have, but it was physically painful sometimes. My chest ached for Darrow. Not for that twat Lysander tho...
And of course we get more Sevro and Victra, so I shan't complain.
4/5 stars. Not saying it's not an amazing book, but my heart hurts. I needed just the tiniest bit of relief sometimes. A smattering of comic relief from Sevro, or the ittiest bittiest hint of hope. Not our King Pierce Brown though. He will emotionally destroy us first!