Golden Son

2.5 stars. Okay that ending definitely stuck the landing. Wow. Where do things go from here? The plot is the only thing here that's making me read the series (when the plot ISN'T being repetitive or formulaic...)

In Pierce Brown's defence, he seems to have a pattern in the plot that works and so is deciding to stick to it. Nothing wrong with that. But it just... made me feel so bored at times, even when high stakes events were happening. It made me feel like the story was dragging even though everything is so fast paced. Contradictory as hell, but that really is how I felt. Everything was jumping around all over the place and while all the plot twists were super interesting, getting to them was arduous.

I still do not give a shit about any character here, even Darrow. Which is a big fucking problem since I'm a character driven reader. Being in Darrow's head in 1st person pov is exhausting. The writing from his pov is so grandiose and ostentatious that it makes me roll my eyes and I get tired of it really quickly. The man sure has been through a lot of trauma so I want to cut him some slack, but could he please stop giving off the vibes of being the obnoxious main character in a theatre production?

Actually, now that I sort of mention this theatre production comparison (odd, I know), I must say that part of why none of the characters have me feeling invested, including Darrow, is that everything feels so scripted. Like of course it's scripted, it's a story written by an author, but I don't want it to feel so deliberately like that, you know? It plays hand in hand with the over-the-top monologues and general grandiose nature of Darrow's narrative. Darrow just feels like a caricature of someone in his position. If you asked me to write down the stereotypical characteristics of a mass-appeal underdog uprising book where the main male character goes through a physical transformation and tries to infiltrate the system that harmed him... then 90% of the stuff I would have said would have actually applied to how Darrow really is. Insufferably self-righteous, self-obsessed, stuck between the random affection of two women who ooh and ahh over him because of-fucking-course, loves to dramatize his recollection of things as if he's putting on a stage performance... do you see where I get the caricature feeling from?

Pierce Brown also included this very weird feminist monologue from Mustang. As a feminist myself, I must say it felt very... strangely delivered. Perhaps he was facing criticism about some (I like to hope unintentional) sexist undertones in Red Rising, but Mustang's whole spiel was so out of pocket... it was just strange and didn't quite click. Brown is pretty bad at writing convincing characters who are women to begin with so that's not what I'm looking for; I appreciate the attempt but I'd rather it wasn't there I guess since it made me cringe? I don't even know anymore...

I will probably read the the third book for the plot, I want to know how things will unfold. But reading this felt like such a chore that maybe I'll just google spoilers. We have yet to see.