Light Bringer: 6 (Red Rising)

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In the cold prison of our minds, we are alone with our self-hatred, our doubts, and guilt… A friend may reach through the bars and hold our hand, but they cannot open the door for us. Only the prisoner has the key. All I can do is remind him we’re waiting for him when he gets out.”

We see more of the rim and core, but we also get introduced to new important characters who bring new elements to the plot.

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Well because Pierce Brown doesn't care about his reader's feelings and is having way too much fun ruining character's lives.

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.Special thanks to my Patrons on Patreon for giving me extra support towards my passion for reading and reviewing! 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! Some thoughts after I read Dark Age and hated it despite loving the first four books of the series:

Pierce stated that there's one particular death that he wrote in this book that he "bawled [his] eyes out." [4] Darrow and Lysander have strong showings, as you'd expect, no matter how you feel about Lysander (I'm talking about a particular reddit board, iykyk haha!). But Lyria's story and her budding friendship with a particular character really caught me off guard. She didn't steal the scenes in this book (that honor belongs to someone else), but she did rise in my "favorite character" standings. 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. Light Bringer utterly and completely consumed my thoughts. It hit all the right buttons for me. Battle and fight scenes were pure perfection. Once again I not merely read but I LIVED the book written by Pierce Brown. In my opinion, I don't exaggerate when I say that he is master storyteller of our generation. Please, Mr. Brown. I can't wait four more years for Red God. But also, I don't want this story to end. So...do with that what you will.

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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. Marooned far from home after a devastating defeat on the battlefields of Mercury, Darrow longs to return to his wife and sovereign, Virginia, to defend Mars from its bloodthirsty would-be conqueror - Lysander. Lysander longs to destroy the Rising and restore the supremacy of Gold, and will raze the worlds to realize his ambitions. The events happening in each Part (4 parts in total) are paced in such a way that to hop across the solar system might be a little jarring. When you’re in a massive space battle, the last thing you want is to jump to another location for a territory dispute. Less hopping makes the book more cohesive but you will miss some of those side characters for long stretches. 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.

Edit after a couple hours of sleep: I think I prefer this book to Dark Age, even though DA does some things better. I would say I like LB more mostly because of the relationships between the different characters. Either we get new relationships between characters or old one's are reaffirmed/restored, some are deepened,... . And this aspect just creates a bright flame in anotherwise very bleak world. I think that's also why I prefer this book in general to DA. DA was a very dark book with a little flame of hope. LB is still not a cosy relaxing read but the flame of hope shines a bit brighter to me here. And I personally do prefer that. Also I do think that this book isn't the lesser to DA in the amount of twists, things exploding and incredible political intrigue. I love all 3 of those things Much like A Song of Ice and Fire’s George R. R. Martin, Brown is an author who is interested in exploring the consequences of his protagonist’s actions. Revolution doesn’t come without a price and no one can stay a hero forever.” — The Mary Sue

With odes of nostalgia to the earlier books, it will take you through the full spectrum of emotion. I laughed, I cried, I hated, I mourned, but most of all….I hoped. Because Eo's dream is still alive - and after the dark age will come a new age: of light, of victory, of hope.