I wrote in my review of Morning Star that Pierce Brown had a monumental task then to conclude the staggering uprising premise introduced in his original trilogy in a decisive and satisfying manner. Perhaps an even bigger challenge is to build on the original trilogy’s work and segue the series into its next arc; rebuilding and running a society after it was torn down. As such, Iron Gold had dual purposes to transition the series to a new direction as well as recapture the page-turning intensity that made the first three novels impossible to put down. I consider Iron Gold a resounding success at the former by somehow expanding the solar system society further and using many clever strategies to jumpstart new plot threads. When it comes to the latter however, I found Iron Gold to be competently solid but a bit touch and go with its pacing and reader interest.

I was initially hesitant when I started reading Iron Gold, expecting an extended lull and flood of information dumping to bridge the ten years that pass between Morning Star and Iron Gold. I also expected Darrow to experience a shift in priorities or mindset, similar to the beginning of Morning Star after he was captured by the Jackal. Both of these concerns were surprisingly proven wrong with Iron Gold immediately taking off from the get-go in several different directions.

Unlike the past three novels that are primarily told from Darrow’s perspective, Iron Gold splits its chapters amongst four different characters’ perspectives. While I was at first thrown off and confused due to the sheer number of characters, affiliations, and locals involved (a lot of information was a bit foggy since I didn’t brush up on past books after taking an extended break from the series), I soon realized why Pierce Brown likely chose to write the novel in this manner. Morning Star (and to a lesser extent, Golden Son)’s beginning noticeably lagged and had a tough recapping events that happened off-the pages, re-orienting the reader in the present, and providing context in an engrossing way. By spreading the narrative across four different characters of completely different backgrounds, locations, and political affiliations, Iron Gold can convey a huge amount of information and context from different angles, without drowning the reader in excessive monotonous detail. As each of the four stories progress and start to intertwine, you can start to piece together the situation, all the opposing parties involved and the growing turmoil hidden below the past ten years of liberation (or as some would say, tense peacetime). While Darrow’s initial chapters are focused on his family, as expected based on the concluding chapters of Morning Star, the other perspectives provide immediate action and energy to help propel the story forward until the Reaper dawns his armor and heads back to the battlefield.

Apart from Darrow’s perspective, Iron Gold introduces three separate perspectives told from three distinctively different characters. Cleverly, all three of these characters have direct ties to other notable characters from the past trilogy and each almost embody previous tones or plot arcs of the past novels. Lyria is a young Red from the Gamma mines (if you remember back in Red Rising, the Gamma were the prized mines of Mars who received preferential treatment compared to Darrow’s mines), liberated the underground world she knew only to be dumped into a poor and miserable refugee camp. Ephraim is a Gray freelance thief who was engaged to a certain slain Son of Ares member in Morning Star, and is ex-member of the Uprising working off seedy contracts on Luna. And finally, the third is Lysander Au Lune, the grandson of the past Sovereign Octavia Au Lune. Now a grown young man, he’s figuring out his place in society and his opinion of the new Republic, all under Cassius’ brotherly guardianship near the Outer Rim.

Lyria’s perspective feels like a callback to Darrow’s mining and carving years, followed by confusion and disgust for how the wealthy live compared to the poor. Her frustration, anger, and inevitable pain when she loses people dear to her closes mirrors Darrow’s experiences in Red Rising from an alternative scenario where he didn’t become a fighter or soldier. I found Ephraim’s self-preservation and “to hell with honor, slag the Senate” mentality to be incredibly refreshing and my personal favorite of the four due to how different his character’s personality and thoughts were (not to mention he’s the jaded, broken queer antihero character I didn’t know this series had been sorely lacking). His current career as a thief is a direct parallel to the infiltration and spy arcs in the first half of Morning Star, with bits of Golden Son’s cut-throat political warring on Luna. Lysander’s early chapters recapture the space epic feel of the back half of Golden Son and his stay in the outer rim echoes Darrow’s trials with Sefi and the Obsidians in Morning Star. One of Iron Gold’s strengths is that if you liked any of the past books in the series (which is to be assumed if you’re going to read book #4), there’s something to like somewhere here.

On top of the different stories, every one to two chapters Pierce Brown times the shift in perspectives perfectly; having a skill at cutting the scene right at the perfect cliffhanger repeatedly. It’s all the more impressive that the actual content of characters’ perspectives is solid and has very clever plot twists, as is the norm for his books. I feel like I keep saying the novel is clever, but it really is, and Iron Gold accomplishes so much in only 600 pages.

The drawback to this ensemble approach is that not all of the perspectives are equally exciting to read, and I found my interest jumping up and down based on each particular arc. While the cliffhanger cuts are great at keeping the reader hooked in theory, I often felt like the cuts were disrupting the flow of the story, preventing Iron Gold from reaching the relentless, frenetic highs that this series is known for. I found the book to be a gradual slow burn that objectively was great on paper, yet somehow felt just a hair underwhelming in practice while in the moment.

Due to the four perspectives split, despite learning a huge amount about information about Virginia/Mustang’s reformed Republic, not much time or action actually passes narrative-wise. 600 pages split more or less four ways comes out to only about 150 pages devoted to each perspective, and at the end of the book I had a nagging feeling that I didn’t get enough progression from each. For example from Darrow’s perspective, there’s political maneuvering done on Mars, followed by two major operations in a command and conquer style. But for the scope of the political unrest and coup, these two operations feel like they barely moved the story forward. Lysander’s perspective feels very similar where we barely scratched the surface of what’s going on in the outer rim. Lyria and Ephraim’s perspectives fair slightly better as they physically move a lot more, have their perspectives cross about half-way through, but it still felt like my time with them was too brief.

However, perhaps that feeling of wanting more is a sign that Iron Gold was successful at transitioning the series into its new sequel saga. It covered an incredible amount of ground and summarized the past 10 years without resort to info-dumping. It established multiple new plot threads and a collection of new major characters for Pierce Brown to work with.  And with Lyria and Lysander being aged close to Darrow’s age in Red Rising and Pax/Electra aged similar to Lysander in Morning Star, we have a new generation to that could takeover as main protagonists should Pierce Brown decide to humble both Darrow and the reader’s expectations by offing him dramatically. I doubt he’d go down that route considering how involved and aware he is of his #Howlers fanbase, but the possibility is still a threatening option to up the ante (just look at how dramatic Sevro’s fake death was in Morning Star as an example). It’s all solid on paper, it’s just a bit unfortunate all the strengths of the book don’t quite carryover into the reading experience. Don’t get me wrong though, Iron Gold is an excellent, well-written book with the usual great plot that I still enjoyed. But like many other readers have reviewed, this one felt mixed due to its place and role in the series.