Light Bringer: 6 (Red Rising)

Product Information

Thank you so much to Del Rey Books and Penguin Random House for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. The measure of a man is not the fear he sows in his enemies. It is the hope he gives his friends.”—Virginia au Augustus In a word, Golden Son is stunning. Among science fiction fans, it should be a shoo-in for book of the year.” — Tordotcom

It is official! Book #6 LIGHT BRINGER will be out on July 25th 2023! And afterwards we will get book #7 RED GOD (goosebumps!), which means that two novels are needed to finish this saga. One thing that I found in both Iron Gold and Dark Age was that I didn’t love Lyria’s POV. It was more interesting in Dark Age than in Iron Gold, but there was still something missing. Brown found his stride with Lyria’s POV in Light Bringer in large part due to her having a more interesting part of the story to tell. In the previous two books, Lyria’s POV almost always felt kind of like a side quest. However, in Light Bringer Lyria is finally brought to the forefront of one part of the overarching conflict and I loved that. my favorite thing about this series is pierce's intention of improving with every release. it creates high expectations, and when time passes and you start doubting the outcome, pierce goes and blows your mind away. the combination of old habits such as character emotion focus and character dynamic with a more mature, slow-paced yet insanely intense prose was what makes light bringer so different from the others while keeping what the readers love about red rising. i appreciate how polished the dialogues were, how they led to action and were intertwined with the storyline, something i had missed at times with iron gold and dark age. what really heartwarmed me was the affection gestures that kept being thrown here and there between characters. really shows all the pain they've suffered beyond tears and the suffering and imo makes them feel very real and organic. i think the cruelty of the war they are under comes through the story better when both sides of the coin are shown, the death but also the hope. very glad pierce decided to explore that further, even by using the characters that i love. The thing I was most concerned about going in is that this book a. wouldn't live up to the craziness that was Dark Age and b. feel like a set up book for the finale. In my opinion it dodges both of those bullets quite well. It never tries to be "Dark Age part 2". It's it's own thing story-wise and especially tone-wise. I feel like if it tried to keep upping the "dark" quotient instead of just telling the story that was needed the book wouldn't have worked as well. It's still definitely fits in with the tone of these sequel books, but it's clearly its own thing. Also, this book keeps moving the plot forward and resolves some things that needed to be handled. It never feels like "split book" or a "set up book". It's wholly emotional and satisfying while leaving you wanting more. Light Bringer combines Brown’s trademark character work and action sequences with the grimness of Dark Age, and the hopefulness of the original trilogy, to create a truly unique entry in the Red Rising Saga. I cannot wait for book 7, Red God!

Okay, I'm ready. In the interest of not spoiling anything for anyone else, I must be brief. This book follows four characters, the newest of which (though not technically a new perspective to the series, just the newest compared to the others) is probably the weakest in the book (in my opinion). There were also a surprising amount of grammatical errors, but that's to be expected in an "uncorrected" copy, so I won't hold that against it. We see more of the rim and core, but we also get introduced to new important characters who bring new elements to the plot.

We delve deeper into the psyches of the characters as they change from age and trauma. Seeing Cassius’ and Darrow’s relationship heal and as they helped each other grow stronger was absolute perfection.I can’t say too much about Lysander because of spoilers. What I will say is that Brown writes him magnificently and he is one of those characters that elicits a lot of emotion out of me. Whether those emotions are positive or negative you will have to read the book to find out. I have just finished this book while it's 3 a.m here. I just couldn't stop reading. This book is amazing, perfect, frustrating, heartbreaking and most importantly very good Well because Pierce Brown doesn't care about his reader's feelings and is having way too much fun ruining character's lives. I could go on and talk about how amazing the series is, how heartbreaking the deaths and breath-taking the reunions, but it would be redundant. Light Bringer is still able to deliver a lot of emotional punches and the reader curled in a ball of tears.Red Rising is an amazing series, its core are the humanae gestae and the characters, a cast that, after 5 years since first reading the series, feels like home. I hope Red God doesn’t get a mind of its own and comes out on Christmas 2024.

This made for an even more amazing reading experience because I realised that I did still love this series and that this book may well be my favourite book of the year.So why are we fading? Because we don’t wanna be here. We wanna be on the other side of this shit. We’re waiting to live. But this is it. This is our life until we change it. That’s all right. Like Darrow said, it’s a blessing. It is our privilege to fight. So let’s stop eating ourselves, chewing on each other’s legs. It’s stupid. It’s endless. We got more to do.” Pierce stated that there's one particular death that he wrote in this book that he "bawled [his] eyes out." [4] Added to that, Lysander needs to die. I don't care where. I don't care how. I don't even care who strikes the killing blow. It just needs to happen. That kid isn't allowed to see the end of Red God. He's gotten away with too much already!