Book Review | Morning Star
Introduction
Now we come to the end of the first Red Rising trilogy. This has been quite a ride and I’ve been reading a lot of Pierce Brown. My original plan was to immediately pick up Iron Gold and start with that after all of this, but I think I need a break for a couple of weeks so that I can rest and reflect on this trilogy. That’s a problem for tomorrow, though! Today is the day I review the final book in Pierce Brown’s first trilogy: Morning Star. If you haven’t heard my thoughts on the first two books, they can be summarized as Red Rising being mediocre, but Golden Son being a fun experience. My expectation was that Morning Star would be as good or better than its predecessor, but was my expectation met?
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Summary
Morning Star brings the conclusion of the war that Darrow started in Golden Son, win or lose--the pieces are being put into place and sides are being chosen. The drums of war have been pounding ever since Golden Son, but we’re approaching the epic end of this war here in Morning Star. This book is about the end of an epic, interplanetary war that will determine whether the system that the golds have put in place will remain or be dismantled.
The Review
Presentation
I’ve already said all I can about the presentation for these books in my previous two reviews. I like the covers well enough, they aren’t cringey or cliche, the colors are distinct and they make these books easy to recognize on anyone’s shelf. The red wing on Red Rising is still my favorite of the covers, but this is definitely still a four-star presentation overall for Morning Star, as was the case with the previous books.
The Plot
So, the plot of Morning Star… was about what I expected. I knew this was going to be the wrap-up to the war that Darrow kicked off in the second book. There were some pretty solid twists and turns in the plot of Morning Star, though some things I did see coming. There were also some events that took place that felt unnecessary or improperly driven. There’s a bloody, murderous riot at one point that’s supposed to be this pivotal event, but the driving force behind it didn’t feel like enough to justify the response. There are a couple of examples of this: things happening that just drive the plot forward, but don’t seem to have much reasoning beyond that. This was an issue in the first book and something of a problem in the second, but it really stood out to me in this book because the stakes were so high that to have them shift at the whim of the plot, sometimes without rhyme or reason, could be jarring.
Additionally, the ending of the book was disappointing. It felt rushed, incomplete, and anticlimactic, at least in my opinion. There was some excellent payoff in the end, don’t get me wrong, but I was hoping for something that punched a lot harder than this ending did. I think that Golden Son had a much stronger final act than Morning Star did, and this is going to hurt this book’s score.
I’m going to give the plot of Morning Star three stars. It was about what I expected (mostly) and had some problems here and there. It was ultimately pretty average for me.
The World
Pierce Brown’s world has been interesting to me even from the first book. In this one, we get to peek at it a little more than we have in previous books. I still like what I’m seeing, but I am still in a place where I want to see more. I like it, there’s some cool stuff here—especially with the Carvers and the Obsidians—but we just don’t really see very much of it. I got glimpses here and there that were really cool, including time spent in the South Pole of Mars, where many of the Obsidians live.
Unfortunately, once again, I have seen enough of the world to like it, but not enough to love it. This is a war story and we don’t have a ton of time for the setting of that war, which is perfectly fine and understandable. However, it just means that the world itself suffers a lot for it. There’s a lot to love about the world, I just need a deeper dive into these ideas and themes. We’re only scratching the surface of Pierce Brown’s setting in this trilogy.
Once again, I’m giving the world four stars. I like it, I just need more of it. Give me a deeper dive and take time to immerse me in it, and this could easily be five stars.
The World-Building
The world is presented to us in a better fashion in this book than it was in Red Rising and in a manner that's on par with what was seen in Golden Son, with casual bits of world information dropped here and there rather than overwhelming exposition. I think the best example of world-building in this book occurred when the crew was among the Obsidians on Mars, where we learned a lot about their culture. It was most likely my favorite series of chapters, too.
Overall, I think that Pierce Brown’s world-building has improved across these three books. The world-building was pretty solid here and I don’t have a lot of complaints, though there isn’t much to praise about it, either. To be fair, this wasn't a world-building heavy book since it was the end of the trilogy, though there were some world-building elements. I'm just going to give it an average rating of three stars.
The Characters
The character work in Morning Star is definitely the strongest of the trilogy, in my opinion. We have some really solid, interesting characters here and their personalities are shining through in this book from beginning to end, with only a few exceptions when their personalities seem to bend to the whim of the plot. Sevro in particular shines greatly, for me. I know I mentioned in the previous book review that he and Ragnar were my favorites in Golden Son, but they’re going to be my favorites here in Morning Star, too. Sevro absolutely comes into his own in this book and I loved every scene that involved him. He’s a fantastic character and absolutely a joy to experience on the page. If you don’t read the Red Rising trilogy for anything else, read it for Sevro!
However, I do have a complaint regarding consistencies and motivations for our main character, Darrow. It’s entirely possible that I missed something, but there are some changes to Darrow at the beginning of the book that seem to be abruptly thrown away closer to the end, and without any real reason for it. We start this book off with him seeing value in life and not wanting to see it obliterated, even for greater causes, and it’s enough that he’s confrontational about it. Yet, later on in the book, he suddenly doesn’t have those personal convictions, anymore. If I missed a moment that foretold his change of heart, please tell me, because to me it made no sense and it seemed out of character for him.
The characters were great and mostly kept to their own voice and personality. However, there were times when their personalities and actions shifted to serve the plot, which is a problem that I had with Red Rising, too. All in all, this is going to result in four stars given to the characters of Morning Star.
The Writing
Pierce Brown’s writing is still improving, and I think it is even stronger in Morning Star than it was in Golden Son. He writes first-person present perspective excellently and his own authorial voice is becoming distinct and easily recognized. There’s no beautiful, eloquent prose here, but he does have some really skillful word pictures scattered throughout the book. There’s one in particular about the destruction of ships taking place being reflected in someone’s eyes that really stood out to me. I enjoyed his writing here and felt sucked in and fully immersed, rarely being taken out just by his prose.
That said, Pierce Brown has a storytelling habit that I personally do not like. This one I think is going to be extremely subjective. There are probably some people out there who do enjoy this. I am not one of them. The habit is hiding things from the reader that the viewpoint character knows. Having the main character prepare something ahead of time and then reveal it at the right moment, both to the reader and to the characters involved. It reads like a deus ex machina rather than a well-crafted plan, and is pretty irksome, especially when it’s repeated several times. This happened a few times in Golden Son and continued throughout Morning Star and just got exhausting for me, to the point that it felt lazy.
In the end, I’m going to give the writing for Morning Star four stars. It didn’t improve on Golden Son’s writing as much as I’d hoped and the repeated fakeouts really became irritating during my readthrough of this book.
The Pacing
While the writing for the book wasn’t the strongest it could have been, the pacing swept me through the parts of the book where the writing failed. This book is action-packed with occasional lulls to give the reader some breathing room. Even those lulls can be filled with tension and are often interrupted with an abrupt return to the intensity of battle and war.
The pacing was solid for Morning Star. I was never bored with this book, something exciting was always either happening or waiting around the corner. The only reason it took me a long time to finish reading this book is the level of exhaustion that I’ve been receiving from work, not because I didn’t want to put the book down. Morning Star was always begging to be read, and I think the well-thought-out pacing of the book is responsible for that.
However, the pacing brought the book to a jarring and even disappointing ending, leaving it feeling rushed and lacking. It’s as if Pierce Brown slammed on the gas and when it finally came time to pump the brakes, he realized they’d been cut. The resolution of the book (and, consequently, the trilogy) left a lot to be desired, and I think that the aggressive pacing is partly to blame for that. The pacing for Morning Star is going to get four stars from me.
Overall
The final book in the Red Rising trilogy, Morning Star, had some strong parts and some weak ones. There were great character moments and there were lackluster plot points. I’ll also mention that I found the ending to be a bit anticlimactic, though it still delivered some satisfaction. It just felt… somewhat rushed in its ending. It’s hard to be more specific without going into spoilers, but I found myself disappointed by the last fifth or so of Morning Star.
Despite how much I did enjoy Morning Star, there are many points that really fell flat for me. Its strongest suit was the pacing of the book, which ultimately isn’t going to contribute terribly much to the overall score. I was also disappointed by the ending, which is a pretty severe condemnation for the end of a trilogy focused on an interplanetary rebellion. I had fun with this book, but I walked away feeling like it was a pretty average experience, and that’s going to result in this book getting three stars from me.
I think that this checks out because when I think back on my experience with this trilogy, I definitely feel that I enjoyed Golden Son a lot more from a narrative standpoint. There’s a lot to like about Morning Star and it has a lot of strong suits, but it fell short in many ways and had a pretty disappointing ending, in my opinion (despite at least one awesome moment of payoff). I had hoped that this would get at least as good as Golden Son, but it’s going to end up being just average for me, in the end.
Conclusion
I know that this is probably disappointing to fans of the trilogy, but I have to be honest with my reviews. I myself originally expected this to be at least four stars, possibly even five if it really managed to stick the landing. Morning Star had some great parts, but it had some weaknesses too, and just fell short for me as the end of the trilogy. Remember that three stars is average! Not great, not terrible, just average. This isn’t a bad rating, necessarily.
The bad rating went to Red Rising.
Anyway!
Thanks for checking out this post, I really appreciate it and hope that my thoughts on this conclusion to the Red Rising trilogy were meaningful to you in some way. If you’d like to support me, the best way would be subscribing to my YouTube channel! You can also check out my social media accounts, I’m @tlbainter on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, with the latter being where I’m most active. Those links will be at the bottom of this post.
I’m going to take a break from reading Pierce Brown’s work over these next couple of weeks, so my reviews next Wednesday and the one after will be for works that aren’t books. I’ll be reviewing the Dune movie and the newest installment in the Metroid franchise: Metroid Dread. After that, I’ll be diving back into my reviews of the remaining books by Pierce Brown: Iron Gold and Dark Age. We’ll see where we go from there.
Thanks again for taking the time to check out my review, I’m immensely grateful! Until next time, bye!