This series has quietly taken the top spot for me. I’ve read it through more than once, then ran the audiobooks on repeat. Tim Gerard Reynolds absolutely nails the performances.
Early on, Pierce Brown leans into big, hyperbolic similes such as "Bitterness wells in me like bile rising from stomach to throat". The action feels loud and physical, the images land fast. Later, you can see the style tighten up as Piece clearly improved on his writing style. I like both phases. The shift makes the world feel larger and the characters older.
What keeps me coming back are the lines that stick.
Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair.
Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.
And then there are the perfect little grenades:
"And what are you but a pedantic gasp of a fart?"
Nothing hits my spine like the moment in Golden Son when Darrow faces Cassius and the mask slips. The reveal is brutal as he turns the fight on a dime and reveals that he'd been improving and waiting for this moment.
"And with the push of a button, I claim the sword arm of Cassius Au Bellona!"
I wasn’t sure about continuing after the first trilogy. I’m usually not a fan of second arcs. They tend to kill off the characters we’ve grown up with just to make space for new ones, and in a way that happens here too. But the story earns it. It still hits hard, and it’s still sick.
I am glad I continued. The second arc has been a blast, and I’m all in for the next book "Lightbringer".