Written by Danh Phước Tài

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST TWO BOOKS OF THE RED RISING TRILOGY
Read our review for the first two books here

After concluding with a cliffhanger in the second book, the third installment, Morning Star, seems destined to deliver a satisfactory and fulfilling denouement… right… Right???

If you’re pacing back and forth, waiting for a simple yes… well… Here’s the catch: I cannot tell if it’s a “good” ending or not but it can be considered “complete” (with some plot holes) (as expected, this has been the trademark trope of this trilogy throughout, as aforementioned in the previous review) but, in my opinion, the finale feels forced, rushed and anti-climactic.

#BookReview: Morning Star (Red Rising, #3) by Pierce Brown

A spoiler-free synopsis:
Following the tragic events at the end of the second book (as usual), and after the supposedly pomp and ceremony for his victory, the protagonist finds himself once again in a dead end, a double bind in particular: physically battered, politically isolated and haunted by his foolishness to repeat his past mistakes but he cannot take his own life at will, thereby prolonging and exacerbating his anguish. Yet, amidst despair, new sparks of resistance begin to flick (this is a must-have plot device or else the story should have ended in book two).

Afterwards, Darrow of Lykos must rebuild trust with old allies and forge new alliances with uneasy, if not outright feral, forces and, as a mediator, he’s also forced to assuage the vengeance towards the Gold from lower stratums and vice versa. The war has now engulfed the entire solar system, from the cold void of space to the burning heart of the empire, promising massive, cinematic, all-out battles. Additionally, every character — friends and foes alike — is confronted with decisions that test their morals and courage.

The political and philosophical layers of the series are also deepened by Pierce Brown in a well-directed way, with themes such as vengeance versus justice and the clash between ideals and reality, making the story more dynamic.

Personal opinion:

Pierce Brown continues to lean heavily, if not overly heavily, on his well-worn and tiresome motif: the main character must hit rock bottom before bouncing back to achieve some “unprecedented” victory. Even though I cannot downplay Pierce Brown’s talent to incorporate the intricacies of politics, betrayal, the power of belief, etc, into the trilogy, Morning Star cannot escape the repetitiveness of tropes that have haunted the trilogy since Red Rising.

Specifically, the author seems to get a kick out of making epic and dramatic sentences, but, as mentioned in the earlier post, this may be self-defeating. The prose teeters on melodrama, which, instead of driving the story forward, renders certain scenes cringeworthy and awkward. The final line of the novel and the seemingly convincing ulterior motive for a former enemy to collude with Darrow are cases in point. Also, the author once again portrays Darrow as somewhat excessively licentious: grieving about his wife’s death in one part, swearing to protect his current love at all costs in the next, and then vowing to reciprocate another woman’s affection in another life (lol).

Finally, if you look forward to Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings, or Avengers Endgame-esque climactic showdowns to vanquish the enemy once and for all, there won’t be any. The book falls short of that kind of grand closure, which is why I call it anticlimactic.