Book Notes: Golden Son

Pierce Brown’s Golden Son is a worthy sequel to the first installment of the saga, Red Rising. Fun, action-packed, with compelling characters (even if the main character is a little bit too idealized, as is often the case in this sort of book).

Book highlights

We’re all just wounded souls stumbling about in the dark, desperately trying to stitch ourselves together, hoping to fill the holes they ripped in us.

“We all have our own tides inside. They go in. Out.” He shrugs. “Not really ours to control. The things, people, that orbit us do that, at least more than we’d like to admit.”

I would not have raised you to be a great man. There is no peace for great men. I would have had you be a decent one. I would have given you the quiet strength to grow old with the woman you love.

“You think he would have changed?” Mustang asks. “He was always our friend,” Roque says. “It was our responsibility to help him try. Even if it was like hugging a flame.”

I hate how my body shivers at the idea of glory. There’s something deep in man that hungers for this. But I think it weakness, not strength, to abandon decency for that strange darker spirit.

Modern war is fearing the air, the shadows, fearing the silence. Death will come and I won’t even see it.