Review: Dark Age

Dark Age by Pierce Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Bloodydamn goryhell, Pierce Brown, you really are an Apex Asshole.

Perhaps one of the longest-awaited books of the year - any year, really, especially considering that it's been delayed at least an entire one before it eventually came out - Pierce Brown's fifth novel is one he rightly describes as a "mental twister" and a "Frankenstein." Over 750 pages long, loaded with some of the most intense action in sci-fi history (the prologue owes soooooooo much to the opening of The Last Jedi) and continuing Brown's trend of ever-expanding his world-building skills with a new primary setting on Mercury (think of it like Australia, a huge continent with most of the population on the coast and lashed by heavy storms, while the interior is a huge desert waste) and no less than five POV characters: the previous book's Darrow, Lysander, Lyria, and Ephraim, plus our favorite lady badass, Virginia.


(Please, please, please, may Piéra Forde get to play Virginia on TV someday.)

So immense is this book in scope that Brown can't just switch POVs every chapter or two - he needs to make huge blocks devoted to one or two POVs at a time, so we can go hundreds of pages without hearing from Darrow or Lysander, or Lyria or Ephraim, or Virginia. Suffice it to say, though, that each of the five POVs brings us a story of such mind-boggling breadth that it's simply impossible to summarize it all in the space of a Goodreads review.

I will tell you this much, though. As Piéra Forde and many others have said, #fuckofflysander. Seriously, that guy was my least favorite POV for a reason in Iron Gold, and as much as I'd hoped his story arc there taught him a few lessons...erm, not quite. Then again, learning lessons is something Darrow seems to have a little trouble with too, because he's so laser-focused on raining hellfire down on all his enemies. Enemies who, like hydras and their heads, never, ever, ever stop coming. Especially when they're literally on both sides of the system, innermost and outermost planets.

Oh, and that one scene, paged somewhere in the 500s.

Pierce Brown.

What the ever-loving fuck?

The DBs who wrote GoT are eating their hearts out now.

Per aspera ad astra...but how much more aspera do we gotta take? Sure, there's maybe one more book left (though I would NOT be surprised if Brown kept this story going into a third trilogy.) And that sixth book, whenever it comes along, I'm convinced Brown will take all the steps to outdo Dark Age in size and shock and awe. Four-figure page count, each one soaked in blood and ash?

Once again, this book is proof that Pierce Brown is the most incredible mensch in the business, putting all the rest of us storytellers to shame. And released in time for my birthday this year too? The best present I could've ever asked for was this gorydamn gold brick.

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