Pierce Brown

2015 · Pierce Brown · 464 pages · Fiction / Science Fiction

Golden Son is the middle book that broke the middle-book curse, taking Red Rising's academy survivor into the Society's actual war rooms and turning the trilogy's stakes from schoolyard to solar system. Darrow's infiltration of Gold's ruling class escalates through fleet battles, dinner-party knife fights, and betrayals stacked with a card sharp's timing, and the pacing never once touches the brakes across four hundred pages. The ending remains one of modern science fiction's most infamous cliffhangers, a final chapter readers describe with the specific trauma of people who didn't have the sequel on hand. Relentless is the compliment and the caution. The trilogy's consensus peak.

2016 · Pierce Brown · 518 pages · Fiction / Science Fiction

Morning Star answers Golden Son's infamous cliffhanger from the bottom of a box and climbs the entire way back, closing the original Red Rising trilogy with fleet warfare, gambit stacked on gambit, and the revolution finally fought in the open. The emotional register deepens, Darrow rebuilt from broken rather than brilliant, Sevro and Ragnar carrying the saga's best loyalty material, and the finale's convergence of trap and counter-trap delivers the trilogy's contract in full. A slower recovery opening and rescues that arrive on suspiciously perfect schedules keep it a half-step below its predecessor's velocity. As trilogy landings go, the community filed it long ago, stuck, decisively.

2014 · Pierce Brown · 382 pages · Science Fiction

Pierce Brown's debut is a furiously paced dystopian thriller that wears its Hunger Games and Ender's Game influences openly while generating enough original energy to stand on its own merits.