Review: Iron Gold

Iron Gold by Pierce Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As always when I read a Pierce Brown book...bloodydamn goryhell.

Maybe Iron Gold was more of a 4.5 for me, but I'll round it up to a full-on five-star because A) it's by one of my all-time favorite authors and he deserves all the raves; and B) Brown's style evolves so much compared to the original trilogy, expanding the scope steadily as he always does with each successive book he writes.

I was already thankful when I read Morning Star for the first time two years ago and Brown then announced the start of a new trilogy to continue the story ten years later. At first I thought we'd be gone from Darrow's head completely, but no, he returns as one of four POV characters along with Lysander au Lune, Ephraim ti Horn (formerly Holiday's brother-in-law), and Lyria of Lagalos, whom I remember Brown saying (when I saw him in Mountain View with Andy Weir) was his favorite of the new POVs to write. I can see why - she's a welcome return to the world of the Red class, showing just how little the Rising has done for them in practice and poking all the holes in Darrow's best-laid plans. (Ironic that I say that since Brown also claimed in Mountain View that he pretty much pantsed the original trilogy and attempted the same with Iron Gold, but has since resorted to outlining the new trilogy because of the logistical difficulties of pantsing a four-POV novel.) Lyria being dark-skinned (I code her as black, but I could be wrong) helps raise the book's inclusivity factor in terms of POV characters, as does Ephraim, who is gay. And along with the guy in the Mountain View audience who asked Brown about his handling of LGBTQ+ characters and got a very thoughtful answer re: how to create a character marginalized by today's standards but not so much in-universe, this bi reader gives Brown his props on this front.

Multiple POVs are always a tricky situation to handle. I've seen more in individual books by George R.R. Martin and Rick Riordan, but I'm talking third-person here. Brown, though, does something I've never seen before, and frankly I'm more than a bit bummed one of my own planned manuscripts will for sure not be the first to include it - four first-person POVs, all from characters from a very diverse array of circumstances, all from characters of various degrees of likability. Darrow and Lyria, I think, automatically get the most likability because of their sympathetic Red backgrounds - though Darrow, having all but become a Gold, is shown through actions and symbolism to have become, in some ways, as terribly flawed as many who were born Gold. Ephraim, a disillusioned revolutionary, pops off the page because of how much his ongoing grief informs his slant on things - that, plus the fact that his parts of the story are essentially a space heist movie. Lysander, for me, is the weakest of the four POVs, the one to which, largely due to his privileged background, I'm least connected - and which, to me, feels the least connected to the other three, particularly Darrow. That said, though, his sections of the story bear one of the book's strongest themes overall - decadence falls sooner or later, and what matters is how one makes use of one's reduced circumstances following said fall.

But it's not just decadence that can fall. Idealism can fall too, especially when perpetual war continues to ravage all your universe. Ten years on from Morning Star and the Rising is still struggling, sandwiched as it is between two powerful forces who won't give up their territories easily, nor will they stop fighting each other with the more moderate forces caught in the middle. More than ever, Brown's reflection of world politics - and especially American politics - is scorchingly relevant.

Iron Gold is a long ride - 600 pages, the longest Brown has given us yet. It's high on action, high on intrigue, and especially near the end when he deploys a couple of cliffhangers that verge on the Aveyardian like none of his since Golden Son, high on feels. I can spoil NOTHING here, but be warned - the ending of this book will leave you crying just a bit, and not even from one of the deaths! (Well, maybe one of them, but again, no spoilers.) And though this new trilogy may be more tightly plotted than pantsed, I still wish you best of luck in attempting to parse Brown's endgame.

Per aspera ad astra.

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