Light Bringer

My heart is heavy. There was no other way for this to end.

Coming from Dark Age this book was abit of a let down. I loved Dark age, with all its brutality but light bringer was softer. There are so many character moments I loved in this. But for quite a bit of the book it felt as if we were going nowhere.
There were the epic battles, one duel scene I loved but looking back on the book as a whole, the characters were stuck in places. Granted, they needed to be, but I was always waiting for more.
The beginning of Lyria storyline felt dropped, and I wondered why I followed her through it all for it to come to nothing.

I am one of the rare people who love Lysander. I find him interesting and while his story for the most part of this book was meh, by the end I was screaming at him.

The strong points of this book are the villains. I love Atlas. Volga grandad. Incredible characters.

And Cassius. Oh I loved his arc from the first book to now. He's become one of my favourites.

The ending is what is strong in this book. The whole beginning was leading up to this point and I can't wait for the next book.

Excellent book that I feel is the best in the series so far, though that may be recency bias. Pierce Brown ramps the pacing back up to Golden Son level along with much needed “breathing time” to get more character interactions as well. I'm kind of sad I finished and need to wait for Red God now. Might be a good excuse for another re-read of the series before the last book comes out though. 

4.50/5.00

What an incredible journey! The story of Darrow delights, thrills and touches one deeply. Light Bringer is not the story of the Reaper, not of the Sovereign, not of the Fear Knight. It is the story of Cassius and Darrow, Athena and Ares, Volga and Vagnar, Diomedes and Darrow, and unfortunately, Lysander and Atlas. The characters are real and busting out of the pages. Brilliant storytelling, glorious battles, martin-level dialogue and incredible character moments. Light Bringer is the perfect penultimate book of the red rising saga. Per Aspera Ad Astra.

I think this is easily my favorite book of this series. I looked over my last reviews for books 4/5 (or 1/2 depending on how you count them) and I guess this was originally a trilogy and now its 4 books (or maybe I just assumed a second trilogy), so I had kind of thought this was the last book when I started it.

It does appear the last book will be out much sooner than this one was, so maybe as he was writing the final book he realized he had too much he wanted to do and split it in two.

I still prefer the Darrow chapters to all the others, but Lyria and Virginia were interesting as well.

Lysander is still far less enjoyable to read, but necessary to getting a big chunk of the plot. Overall I thought this book was more in lines with books 2 & 3 of the original trilogy and less like books 1, 4 & 5. Hopefully the final book will be as enjoyable if not more so.

The narration by Tim Gerard Reynolds is spectacular as always. I haven't listened to a book read by him in a while. He does a variety of voices and you can tell when the protagonist swaps in a new chapter simply by the way he reads them. I highly recommend the audio version.

I feel like the writing and plotlines are sloppy but overall I still enjoyed it. He cleans up trying to make Lyria more interesting than she is by getting rid of Figment, doesn't mention the Abomination, and doesn't rely on Quicksilver as a deus ex, which is good, but he also introduces a lazy plot device (the bioweapon that can kill any color). Fuck Lysander.

9
While golden son might be the more “exciting” book i think thats mostly because its such a drastic change from the pretty-good-but-not-breathtaking first book, and you just get so shocked at all the twists and turns. id go so far as to say this book has a much more complex plot with peaks/moments that give golden son a run for its money.

Without a doubt pierce browns best writing. I didnt know i could like darrow more than i already did!
This book is much more focused on darrow then the last two, and is in turn very introspective as it seems to start wrapping up darrows character arc.

What a journy!

that pixie piece of ass-lard lysander can eat dirt though.