When every interaction is based around violence and mayhem, without any pause, it grows tedious. Iron Gold has darkness, but it has no depth. Sure, the first hanging is brutal, but after Darrow kills yet another friend in a misunderstanding, you’re numb to it. The problem with grimdark, however, is that shock value decays rapidly. Iron Gold continues to push deeper into grimdark territory. From the outset, these books have been very dark. Everyone in this book is a brooding mess of a person, occasionally teetering into full-blown edginess.įull-blown edginess is very much the name of the game here in Iron Gold. These four individuals come from very different walks of life, but they all talk and think the same way. The effect of this is that each of the characters feels the same. All of these perspectives are delivered through the same first-person, present tense style, and this is similarity is where my problems begin.īrown’s writing style has remained constant throughout these four books, and it’s equally consistent across the four PoVs shown here. Thief Ephraim, Gold Lysander, and Red Lyria. We also get three new characters to follow. But this time around it’s not just Darrow’s perspective we get. Iron Gold picks up ten years after the last book, with Darrow having just liberated Mercury from the Ash Lord’s grip. However, this second trilogy doesn’t appear to have any proper name, and given that it’s a fairly direct continuation, I”ll be calling Iron Gold book 4 of the Red Rising series, rather than book 1 of a new series. Iron Gold essentially launches a new three-book series set in the same world as Red Rising. On Venus, the Ash Lord still reigns, and even the people Darrow fought to free are a danger to the new order he has established.

Find my reviews of Red Rising, Golden Son, and Morning Star by clicking on the links-ĭarrow has broken the tyranny of the Golds, but the war is not yet over.

Iron Gold by Pierce Brown