I've been reading through Iron Gold throughout much of November. I had hoped to have it finished earlier, but tacking NaNoWriMo onto my litany of other tasks detracted from my reading time, among many other projects and duties that befell me, this month. Additionally, I changed to an overnight (12a-9a) shift, which meant that for at least a couple of weeks, I was sleeping when I should have been reading. Nevertheless, I’ll be wrapping up my reading this week and will have a review for Iron Gold out next Wednesday. In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to put together a reading blog for Iron Gold. This is my first time doing something like this, so bear with me while I continue learning the ropes.

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 were my expectations met?

I’d already been led to expect that the first book is the weakest in the trilogy, so I kept moving and started reading the second book. I’m glad I did, because--as you’ll find in this spoiler-free review--I found it to be an improvement on the first book in the trilogy. However, just how much of an improvement was it?

I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for within the first few pages of the book. I started reading this shortly after the high I had from The Fires of Vengeance and it took me a couple of days to finish, so it was a fairly quick read. What did I think of it, though?

Immediately after finishing The Rage of Dragons, I grabbed The Fires of Vengeance and started reading. I’ve been pretty busy with work and a few personal things, so my reading of this book was a little slower than Rage, but I’m grateful for that because we won’t get book three, The Lord of Demons, for a couple more months. The book’s release in 2022 can’t come soon enough. While I wait, though, I’ll divulge my thought on the second book of this series.

Tau, a lower-class citizen within this book’s caste system, is on a quest for vengeance that leads him to join his people’s military. There, he trains to become a better fighter, but better will never be good enough for him. He aims to be the best and will accept nothing less of himself.