Golden Son

★ ★ ★ ½
Okay. I have very conflicting thoughts about this one. My three words for this book are repetitive, unoriginal (sorry), and captivating. Throughout the entire book, Darrow's inner monologue is pretty one dimensional, and even after the first few chapters, extremely repetitive. The amount of references to Eo got exhausting real quick. We get it—he's doing all this for red-haired girl from the mine who wanted more from the world. His internal conflicts are pretty basic, and almost too straightforward. The way it's written leaves little for the reader (me) to infer or fill in, and it just too on the nose. It's like a robot tried to have and express their emotions the way they think emotions should be expressed, but it just falls completely flat. I know there was so much potential for me to really feel like I was in his mind—experiencing what was—but I felt very disconnected from it. Also, the first couple chapters with the war games was literally just Ender's Game? Ok. Moving on to what I liked. I loved the pace of it. I was never bored (well, except from about 50% - 60%, but we'll get to that). I finished it in a couple of days, and didn't struggle to keep turning the pages. Also, I really liked the way the dialogue is written—I wish that writing style had carried over into Darrow's thoughts. I also felt like there were a ton of twists, and I never really saw them coming. Every time you think it's going well, sure there's that little hint of “well something has to go wrong”, but I never knew what exactly was going to go wrong. I will say, from the halfway point until about the 2/3 mark, I zoned out, and wasn't really following what was happening, and didn't have much of a desire to figure it out either. Really, what's carrying this rating is the pacing and amount of action. I still don't feel the urge to pick up the next book and find out what happens next.