Morning Star - Pierce Brown

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⭐ 8.5/10

(Originally written by Tim)

The best of the Red Rising trilogy, this one starts in a place of complete despair and ends with a pretty exhilarating finale. This was real edge-of-my-seat book, and I read it way faster than any of the others. Plenty of incredible action scenes, and more than a few emotional gut punches.

However, I fought against the first person narration again in this one. He used the same method I complained about in the last two, except this time it was even more frustrating. Without spoiling anything, there is a shocking moment with real weight, but then we find out that our protagonist knew about it the whole time and it was all part of the plan. Yet we view things from his perspective, so why did we as readers never know, and why were his emotions so convincing... It's just really frustrating, and a cheap way to shock the reader that he uses in the climax of every book and really undermines the moment.

Still, I enjoyed lots of the homages to earlier books, and the character complexity and growth was refreshing. Really nice combination of sci-fi/fantasy, I am glad I read this series. His second trilogy is almost complete, but I might take a break from this series for a bit.

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