Iron Gold (Red Rising Book 4) – Pierce Brown – Episode 127
The Buddies are back from their extended hiatus (sorry vacations, bats, and constipation got in the way) to tackle Pierce Brown’s “Iron Gold,” the fourth book in his Red Rising series. The first trilogy currently sits #1 in both Keith and Dman’s rankings, so big expectations for this one. The Buddies got to revisit their old friends Darrow, Severo, Mustang, and many more along with some new friends as well. Did Iron Gold meet the Buddies high standards? Well, you’ll just have to listen to find out. So, grab your razor, practice your “Hail Reaper” salute (but maybe not in public), and join the Buddies as they navigate Pierce Brown’s expanded universe of morally questionable heroes and volume-inconsistent narrators!
Intro (0:00-3:13)
Stock Up/Down (3:14-34:25)
Favorite Scene/Character (34:26-41:40)
Love/Hate (41:41-50:36)
Conclusion (50:37-53:25)
NEXT BOOK: Dark Age (Red Rising Book 5) by Pierce Brown
Transcript for SEO Purposes 🙂
Alright. Welcome to my book club. I’m Dylan here with the last bone rider. Keith, what’s up, buddy? D man, my good man.
It’s been a bloody damn long time. It really has. I feel like it’s been this is one of our longer hiatuses. You were on vacation. It’s a long book.
Things happen. But here at the Buddy Book Club, we’re breaking down some bestsellers, and this week, we’ll be discussing twenty eighteen’s Iron Gold by Pierce Brown, our boy. If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read or reach out about any past episodes, you can visit our website, buddybookclub.com. Sign into our DMs on x or Instagram, that’s buddy book club podcast. You can listen to us iTunes, Spotify, radio podcasts.
Actually, a lot of people listen on I guess it’s not iTunes, it’s like Apple podcasts. So I don’t know why I always say iTunes, but whatever. Download, subscribe, five star review, please, and thank you. So Keith, our buddy Pierce Brown came out with the Red Rising trilogy in 2014, hammered them out one year after another, 2014, 2015, 2016. We’ve initially fell in love with Red Rising, which is interesting because if from what I understand, if you ask people to rank both series, like the two trilogies, they would put and this is conjecture, so what do I know?
But they would put either Red Rising or Iron Gold at the bottom, which means Iron Gold must be fire because we loved Red Rising. Yeah. Yeah. The first book. Yeah.
So we create those out back to back back to back years. And then I guess he thought he was gonna be done with the whole series, which is interesting because he left a lot of things open in Morningstar. But 2018, he decided to, you know, follow-up his trilogy with a with another trilogy which takes place ten years later. So the war has been going on for for ten years. I didn’t think much of it when I heard that there was a second trilogy.
Potentially a money grab in my opinion, and I say that with no judgment at all to Pierce because you gotta squeeze that IP for all it’s worth. I I respect it. I mean, you don’t have to go like George Lucas level, but one level below that is is totally fine for me. But you had heard that these were good books and we’re in kind of this summer beach read season. And even though they’re long, I still feel like they fit the beach read for the sci fi fantasy group.
Would you agree? Yeah. I think they’re we’re getting into more of an adult sci fi now. Like the first ones, I think you could get away with saying they’re You. I didn’t think they were at the time.
But this these are like now we’re getting a lot more characters. We’re getting the rim. We’re getting Mars. We’re getting Venus. We’re getting every planet out there.
You have to remember a lot of characters. So it’s a little different. It’s a little more, grown grown up Red Rising for for the kids. Yeah. And you like everything involving rimming.
Right? Right. I’m a big rim guy. I stick around the rim. Not just in basketball and in other things.
You know? In your personal life. The Right. The that trip to Italy, things you know, the different way of loving is rubbed off on you. So with that, we can just jump right into stock up, stock down.
Keep whatever stock up. Stock up, Harvey Dent. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. No true words ever been spoken, but my boy, Darrow, it was a tough book for Darrow. We come in and you think he’s a family man now.
He’s at home and he’s trying to help set up the this new society. Nope. He’s he’s been at war for ten years. Barely sees his kids, his wife. He’s kinda going against the Republic for and for all of which it stands.
The A little of America in there? Yeah. When we get to him and he’s like, I did all this stuff for the Republic to win the war, and they’re like, fuck you. And he’s like, instead of being like, alright. Whatever.
Like, you don’t you don’t need me then. Like, I’m the I’m the, like, the the dude that brought you this. You don’t need me. We’ll we’ll see what happens then. And waiting for them to, like, come to him groveling and be like, you know, alright.
We were wrong. He he’s like, no. I’m right. And and then kind of instead of, like, saying screw you, he kinda is like, screw you, but I’m gonna also go do my own thing again. He kills Wolfgar, which was, like, one of his buddies and to escape, which I I didn’t care for either.
You don’t pull your razor out unless you ex wanna kill someone. He’s like, I didn’t mean to. It’s like, well then don’t pull the razor out. And then the biggest thing really is that makes me question everything is that Sevro, his right hand man, his ride or die from been there since day one. Once he starts disagreeing with you, you know you’re fucking up.
You know what I mean? Like, that’s that’s like the really the pulse check. He should really be checking in with him more being like, yo, am I doing the right thing? Because because Sevro is the the guy that will almost always be like, yo, yeah. Absolutely.
You’re you know what you’re doing. You’re doing it. Yeah. Sevro’s gonna tell you how it is. Yeah.
And then when he starts saying you’re not doing what you you’re supposed to be doing, then we got issues. So I just think it was a tough book for for Darrow, and I’m hoping the next two books, we we see the old Darrow. Yeah. But I think and and this is this is probably the biggest thing for me in this book, so I’m glad you brought it up first. Also, you ruined one of my stock downs, which was rat or die guy stock down because Dara doesn’t give a shit about Severo anymore.
Like, well, you know, and and Severo just leaves him, which I feel like Severo would’ve in my mind, Severo would’ve had a little bit more of a blowout before leaving him in in previous books. But time has changed. People change. You know, you ended that, very well said stock up with, I hope we see more of the old Darrow going forward. But that might be the problem, is it seems like Darrow hasn’t really changed.
And the old Darrow was what they needed for this revolution, but now that there’s a government in place and the Vox populi, which is important, that’s the voice of the people, you have these things in place so that everyone is represented, but Daryl wants to be the commander in chief during wartime. He wants to be able to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, how he sees fit, but you’ve built a bureaucracy now. You know, you’ve built a bureaucracy that’s not just gold. The bureaucracy is all colors, and with this big bureaucracy that’s solar system wide, things don’t move as fast as Darrow wants, and when things don’t move in his favor, he instead of just say, okay. That’s the way it is, he pushes back.
And that’s why eventually, you know, an arrest warrant comes out for him. So I’m wondering if this is the Darrow the Darrow of old is still the Darrow of today, and that’s not not the right Darrow for the situation. Because, you know, when we had the first trilogy, Darrow was almost like Maximus from Gladiator, and that’s probably how it should have ended for him in death in the final duel kind of situation, but we just all assumed that he would do what Maximus was striving for. I guess if his wife didn’t get raped and murdered in front of her child’s eyes, who then also got murdered and who knows what else. But he would do what Maximus would wanna do and just go and see his wife and child and be happy and ride off into the sunset, into Elysium, if you will.
But that’s not with Adeiro that that we have. And I was kind of wondering it was also, you know, one of my lingering questions is what is gonna become of Darrow in the the rest of this trilogy? Because this was definitely a setup book. That’s for sure. And I’m wondering if Darrow is like the Anakin Skywalker of this story.
Is he not gonna be willing to move off of whatever cause he sees or the way he sees this playing out. And I’m not saying he’s not gonna go full Vader vibe, but he’s already showing that he’s he’s not gonna listen to the government, which is a government that he helped put in place. I think I would agree with you if with the book ended and he was like, I was right all along these idiots. But he does end the book and he’s like remorseful, which that when I said the old Daryl, that’s what I mean. Like, the thing that sticks out to me about the old Daryl was the guy that says hand up and then he’s like, someone in my unit made a mistake.
I’ll take a beating for them. That’s the type of person I am. Like, he’ll take a beating but I’m taking a beating also because I’m the leader. He hasn’t really done that here. Like, he hasn’t really been done the hand up.
The end of the book, he started being like, I fucked all this up. That’s on me, which I wish he came to that sooner. The other thing I didn’t really like was the whole hail reaper. Mhmm. I I the only the last person I remember that used the hail thing wasn’t wasn’t great.
So I was like, can we yeah. Can we use a different slogan? I I’m guessing it’s like a Roman Empire thing. I don’t know. But Yeah.
Hail Caesar. Okay. Yeah. Alright. That’s I didn’t realize that.
I was like, hail reaper. What the what the fuck? Sig Heil reaper. What? Yeah.
I’m I’m interested to see how it how it plays out because he went rogue and, obviously, is going for his his own what he wants to do. You know, he’s but that’s the problem with and that’s what’s interesting about this book and and many books that Pierce Brown has done, like the other trilogies too, is that everyone has perspectives and everyone’s perspectives are different. So what he sees is the right way to do it. He’s not he’s not an evil person by any means, and he’s not doing it in evil ways. And that’s I think that’s an interesting thing about stories in general is the way that people feel like they’re doing the right thing, but either they’re going about it the wrong way or it’s like just definitely not the right thing.
But speaking of perspective, that is my first stock up is perspective. We have a whole kind of paradigm shift, I guess, in the way that Pierce Brown’s approaching this not only this novel, but presumably the entire series. We have only we’ve only read, Iron Gold. But he’s going from multiple point of views. He’s got as opposed to just Darrow’s point of view.
So this one, he’s got four. It’s Darrow, Lysander, Lyria, and Ephraim. Those are those are the four. I guess before I get into my fields, I’ll put I’ll put you on the spot. How did you feel about it going from just Darrow’s first person perspective to, like, these these four?
Yeah. I thought it was a really good move because the reason that Darrow’s story is so good is because he come goes from lower class to upper class. Basically, when we go through his initial three books, we’re seeing everything as he sees it. Now he’s like the head of things. So there’s not a lot more perspective he can give other than like, there’s a battle.
So now we’re getting perspective of like a red and now we’re getting someone that’s like Ephraim, like, kind of a con artist slash person that’s been disillusioned by all this stuff that’s going on and He was like an insurance adjuster. Like, that was his job. Yes. I do think it’s a really smart move to get more perspectives and see, like, the whole world open up again. Yeah.
I liked it as I liked it as well. In some ways, we’ve already done the Darrow story. Like, I don’t need more Darrow growth that seems somewhat repetitive, and he’s already changed so much that I’m fine with having more more Darrow, of course, but I don’t want it to be the only voice that’s happening and also the only perspective. And I think that’s the point here, and that’s what’s interesting. The scope is getting bigger, it seems like, in this trilogy.
Obviously, the, you know, the last ones we had, it was pretty much Mars, there was some Luna, and then a little bit of the rim. You know, him going to the rim for, like, a a hot minute. But now it’s there’s Mercury, there’s Venus, there’s Mars, there’s Luna. You know, everything’s going on, and the themes as well as the scope is expanding, I feel like. Mhmm.
Yeah. So having these different perspectives of people who now we have the aftermath of what happened from Morningstar. It’s been ten years of war, and we have these perspectives, like you said, of different people at different societal levels that are all somewhat intertwined. I liked the way they intertwined Ephraim and Lyria because at the beginning, I was a little I didn’t like jumping around so much. I was just trying to find my way back into the story, and I didn’t necessarily love jumping from one thing to another because I I wasn’t sure how they all tied together.
But I did like how they tied Ephraim and Lyria together. And then, I mean, Lysandre’s gonna play a big part in this story. He has to. Right? I’m wondering if, like, Lysandre is gonna be the next Darrow of this trilogy because he has a very unique perspective, and he seems like he’s somewhat set in his ways or or his idea of what the right way to have this society is with gold at the top, and and to him, that was order.
And I see that. You know, if you’ve been at war, if Darrow promised this, you know, this uprising that was gonna stop, you know, pretty much stop wars and create peace, and now it’s been ten years of war, Lysandre, he idolized Darrow at the beginning or in the in the last trilogy. He was like, oh, Darrow’s the biggest badass in the whole place. And then finding out he’s a Red, whatever the case is, obviously not super happy when he, like, murders his grandmother or whatnot. But I think he’s gonna have a really interesting story line.
I mean, it already started out pretty interesting. So kinda having all those perspectives, I I really liked. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.
Do you have anything else for stock up? The weight of things, stock up? Is that a song by Tool or something? No. I’m just saying, the impact of things.
The way that the the way that things is more because, I’m not talking about Italy even though the way that things are up. Let’s put it that way from Italy. I’ll have pizza and pasta. Oh, yeah. And trust me, I I didn’t shit for the whole trip.
Not once. It was I came back and I was like, I may explode. It was like, I’m not gonna pack up for you. Eating cheese the whole time. I’m like and I you it’s like, I look up weird as I do in order to like, it’s like, oh, yeah.
That’s pretty common. So what you should do is walk a lot. I walk more than I’ve ever walked my entire life. Yeah. I was like, I I sit at my meter all day, and I’m perfectly regular.
I go out there. I’m walking every single day. I drink more water than I’ve ever drank. I drink that’s like, yeah. Then do all these I’m, like, doing every single thing.
It says, like, drink coffee. I drink more coffee than I’ve ever drank. It’s like Yeah. It’s crazy. I did the whole Italy trip.
You know, we went all over Europe when I was in my early twenties Mhmm. With a couple of friends. And we this is, you know, your early twenties, so we’re staying in hostels. We’re doing it on the cheap as cheap as we possibly can. That ideal.
And we started in Italy. We went, like, you know, Rome, Florence. We did the same thing you did. You went Rome, Florence, and, Venice. Right?
Yeah. So we did the same thing. I didn’t shit in Italy. I didn’t I didn’t shit until we got to Switzerland. Like, it was it was, like, a solid nine days.
Yeah. I thought I was I was, like, something’s gonna happen. Right? Like, it just pierces through your intestines or, like, comes out your mouth. I think you start sweating it out or something.
I don’t know. It’s it’s weird. So But yeah. So I I had a I had a very serious Me too. Yeah.
But I’ll tell you, when that first one comes, oh my god. Yeah. So yeah. You get the weight of things. Yeah.
But these books that what I just remember when the books come to an end, there’s always this huge, like, oh, this is just the beginning type feeling. I I don’t know if you recall the the end of the second book especially where he gets captured and he’s, like, everything’s over. And I was, like, oh my god. Like, do you, like, have this sense of dread? But, like, the the books never end and you’re like, alright.
Like, maybe I’ll read the next there you they end and you’re like, oh, shit. Like, the whole world is at stake at this point. Mhmm. So he does a really, really good job of that. If you feel like you just went on this long, long swim with him to get through this and you’re, like, everything’s a battle.
Everything is tough. You get to the end, and you’re like, oh, I’m in a triathlon. Like, we just started the right like, this is not even you know what I mean? Like, that’s what it feels like when we get to the end. I thought you were gonna say we have to swim back, which is a a little Gattaca reference.
I don’t know if you’re a Gattaca fan, but that’s a great I just remember him combing his hair, really. Oh, yeah. It’s shot sloughing off his skin. Yeah. No.
The whole point of him and his brother, they used to do swim battles, and he would always beat his brother even though his brother was, like, a peak human being. Yeah. And so he was like, how did you always beat me, you know, for on the swims? He said, you have to save some for the way back. And he’s like, I never saved anything for the way back.
That’s good. Fully fully committed. I love that. Yeah. Gattaca is a great film.
No people haven’t seen it. I guess I spoiled some of it right there. But You watched that in biology class. That’s the best, best day I’ve seen that class. I love those high school classes where they’re like, alright.
Put this on. Like, I took a photo class, and they were like, you today, we’re gonna watch Blade Runner. I was like, yes, please. I don’t know what I mean, I get it’s beautifully shot, but Yeah. You know, I just Yeah.
Don’t ask questions. Yeah. Don’t worry about that. I’d be a great teacher in high school. I’d just be watching movies all day.
Yeah. Yeah. I’d be like, oh, we’re studying ancient Rome? Gladiator. That’s coming up.
Yeah. I guess I felt stopping in the middle of a sentence kind of thing. Well, he he broke a guy out of jail that he didn’t wanna break out of jail. He did this huge operation to get to was it Venus? Yeah.
He went to Venus to get You know, he’s he’s got gone through all this whole process, all with the end goal, and just by the means. Like, that’s his whole mindset. Hey. Listen. I’m doing all these shitty things, but you know what?
It will be worth it because I’ll end the war when I go in here. He breaks in and then the guy’s just sitting there and he’s like, this guy’s not even been running this. So he basically just did all of this shit. And then, Severo’s like, and I’m out. So he loses his best friend.
He like, the republic’s falling. His kids are kidnapped. Like, everything just comes crashing down in front of him. And he’s, like then he’s, like, oh, I’ve made a huge mistake. And you’re, like, oh, shit.
And then he realized it’s just beginning. So Yeah. The Ash lord is legitimately Ash at this point. Yeah. And he he’s almost like the guy from seven who they wake up in bed, you know, like, he’s he’s pretty much that guy, and which is because of, like, Apollonia somehow was able to poison him from jail or something.
I I don’t know. I didn’t a 100% follow that. But you also know the Ashlord’s daughter is a super badass herself, and she’s running a lot of this, like, she’s running a lot of this space battle stuff. So, like, you have to get hurt too. You know?
It’d be like killing Hitler, but you still got, like, Himmler and Goebbels and whoever that other shitty air force guy was. Like, you still got those guys out there who are still running the show. Like, yeah, it’s good, but you still got these other people who are doing it. So you knew it for that. I mean, at least in my mind, I was like, hey.
This isn’t gonna be the end of it, obviously. I mean, we have a trilogy, so, of course, it’s not. And then I guess Lyria got captured or something at the end. Right? She either captured or dead.
We don’t know. Ephraim is doing his thing. He might be. And Lysander is now, like, going back to the It’s weird. You like Lysander.
I was like, he’s kind of a baby back bitch. I don’t really like him. He like Oh, really? Yeah. He doesn’t fight for himself.
He’s like high class knob that pretends he’s about certain morals, but he doesn’t have any morals. He’s backstabbing. He doesn’t he’s like, oh, I’ll let Cassius die. Like, you know, he that’s what he wants. That’s what he wants.
And then, like, his girl starts fighting her and he’s like, no. The girl I just met, I don’t want them to fight. I’m like, that’s gonna be your breaking point? Like, you know, he’s a bitch. I mean, oh, I can He def he definitely, you know, is using his his gold piece like a wand.
That’s for sure. You know, he’s that let nothing what are those, like, water sticks that you use to, like, find water in the in the desert? What? I don’t know what to do. There’s like these they’re like it’s like a it’s like a witchcraft y type thing.
You’d get, like, a stick and you hold it in front of you, and it finds water. That’s pretty much what he’s doing. Put in front of you. But, yeah, he’s he’s got his heart on for Seraphina. And I did think that Cassius’ death was Lysander was pretty chill about the whole thing.
Yeah. I actually thought that was kinda cool because it was kind of like a a departed exit where they’re like, oh, he’s obviously gonna be fine. Like, you know, and they’re like, no. He’s dead. I was like, oh, wait.
What? But are we I mean, that was another lingering question of mine. Are are we sure? Yeah. There’s no they said he died of, of exsanguination, which is, I think, blood loss if my Latin comes back to me.
Maybe it’s Greek. I don’t know. But I think it’s just blood like, he died of blood loss from the battle, and they just told him that. You know? Yeah.
I guess it’s Let me see the body. Yeah. Or what I need to see the body. So, that was one of my lingering questions, I guess. Is Cassius is Cassius coming back?
But, yeah. I I we’ll see. I mean, that’s why I wanted to you know, for our next episode, we’re jumping right right into what is it? Dark Ages? Is that the name of the second book?
Yeah. We’re jumping right into that because I I felt like it was, it left it didn’t leave me, like, oh, I need to read this next book, but it left me feeling like this, I need a continuation. Like, I need to just keep keep going because I I didn’t get anything answer wise, which I understand. I’m not not mad about it. My last stock up was Half Baked, the movie.
Oh, okay. Yeah. The, specifically, the who’s coming with me? Because, like, that’s pretty much the move that Daryl pulls after he learns there’s an arrest warrant coming down for him. It’s you know, he’s the lead the leader, the you know, everyone expects that he’s for the republic and this, that, and the other thing, all of his people.
Next thing you know, the republic’s got an arrest warrant. He’s like, alright, guys. So, they’re coming for me, and, I’m gonna just go for the Ashlord even though there’s we were trying to get an entire Armada to go after him, and they said no. So I’m gonna need all you guys to to come with me and probably do this suicide mission. You guys down?
People like Who’s Kyle we taking? To be fair, a lot of them were, like, we’re overthrowing the government, I assume. Right? And he’s like, nah. We’re good.
We’re good. That because he could’ve done that. He could’ve gone back to Mars and been like, alright. Let’s ride. Everybody would’ve they went over another government.
So he could’ve. Yeah. They’re sticking true, which I like about Pierce Brown, to this Roman love, you know, this idea of ancient Rome as the pinnacle of societies or or whatnot because that’s exactly what a Roman general would do. They’d be like, oh, the government said the senate says you’re out. Well, I have this army, so let me just bring my army into Rome and I’ll walk it up to the senate and say, are you sure?
You sure? How about them apples? Yeah. So I just I thought it was kinda funny that he was just like, yeah. Who’s gonna come on the suicide mission mission with me?
It’s like, what what, boss? What do you have for Sucked Down? Sucked Down being in a female’s head? I will say we get introduced. We have the first female character introduced to that word in our head in this in this book, Lyra.
I think there is a lot of great women characters in this. Great leaders, great fighters. We got Mustang. We got Victor, Daryl’s mom. Just name a few.
There’s a bunch of them. But Lyra, I don’t know if it was the narrator or what it was, but it seemed like she was just, like the narrator’s, like, voice was made it sound like she was crying every single thing she was saying. She’s like, then I walked over to, like, the the grocery store, and she’s like, and then I walked over to the like, that’s how she was, like, saying each line, and I was like, what? So it just made it sound like this character is whining the whole time, where when you think of, like, Darrow’s narrator voice and, again, we we did an audiobook, so this is might be different read differently for different people. But even when he’s upset or sad, you can hear the anger in his voice.
He’s like, and then I pulled my father, like, father’s legs down. And then I you know, you can, like, see it building, like, where you’re, like, yes. Let’s go. Whereas this is kinda goes back to the typical, like, You, like, complaining person. I didn’t didn’t love that.
I also thought that her role in the book, she plays a kind of pivotal role just but she’s just along for the ride. Nothing she does is that by she’s not doing anything herself. The only thing she really did yeah. But the only thing she really did was pull out what’s his name from from the water. Other than that, every single other decision that’s made is just basically her going along for the ride and, you know, like, which is like complete opposite of Darrow where Darrow is like, oh, those are the rules?
Great. I’m rewriting the rules. I’ll do whatever the fuck I wanna do to make this thing happen. Where she’s like, I’m just gonna go along and see what hap you know? Like, that’s kind of what seems to be the difference between the two characters.
So wasn’t a big fan of hers. Not great being in the first female side of them in this book series. Yeah. I’m not I think I’m gonna kinda blame Aiden Maloney, I think, is her is her name. I think that’s how you pronounce it.
Okay. Aiden. Because, one, to some degree, you’re right. I don’t think you’re you’re wrong that she didn’t do a ton. She does escape from the syndicate, like, the the guy who’s trying to kill her, which is probably I would’ve probably just curled up and died.
I wasn’t I’m not jumping through no, like, air shaft or something like that. I’d be out. I’d just be like, alright. Kill me. That’s fine.
And I think that our boy, Tim Gerald Reynold, Gerard Reynold, who does Darrow, is just the best. Like, he’s really, really good. Yeah. He’s not you know what I mean? He’s in the top tier of audiobook narrators that I’ve heard.
I think he really does that justice to that character where there were some other ones that might not have. And and that’s sometimes the problem when you get an ensemble cast for these is that you can like one and not like the other, and that’s kinda the way it goes. And they’re obviously gonna take some artistic liberties as they should with how they voice their character. But Lyria is also I think this is gonna be part of her storyline because she had some serious trauma in her, like, gamma red camp as the red hand or whoever the, like, militant group is that’s coming in and, like, the reds that are going and, like, killing gammas or whatnot for past grievances, which makes a lot of sense. But, you know, I she’s had some trauma with all these people dying around her, and she’s responsible for her nephew.
Every you know, like I said, her whole family’s pretty much dead, and then she’s pulled off a planet. Like, she is the fish out of water in this story. So the idea of her not being bold and aggressive off the bat makes a lot of sense. I think that down the line, something will happen. But she stands up to Ephraim.
I mean, when Mustang is, you know, pretty much threatening to torture her or whatnot or the people around her are, she holds a stand up to them and, you know, tells her story and, like, tells the truth and isn’t but at the same time, isn’t, like, meek and just kill me, you know, whatever the case is. So I’m I I I like the character. We’ll see how it goes. I’m gonna blame them. Well, yeah.
I would have liked her better if she we got the perspective of, like, a terrorist or something. She became a terrorist. Like, even though that would make her a bad care like, person, it would be interesting to see how someone that is a red goes from being a red to terrorist. I also wanted to get more on the red hand. I don’t wanna understand how you’re getting, like, absolutely dominated by a group of people.
When you finally decide to fight back, it’s, like, now against the same people that have the same issue like, same issues that you were experiencing. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Right? It’d be, like, like, British oppressors coming in and you and you never fighting them. I guess this does happen in a lot of countries, though.
Never mind. Anyway Yeah. You you rehash old grievances. So if there are, like, multiple tribes within a country that Britain has been ruling and then Brit Britain steps out of there, then those tribes are gonna be like, well, you guys were friends with the British when they were here, so we’re gonna kill all of you. I guess that does make sense.
Alright. Good good good talk. Yeah. I mean, I do I wouldn’t think that they would wanna the Reds would wanna band together and fight the Grays, the people that were, like, holding them down the whole time. So it is I mean, it’s annoying to me that they’re like, now we’re gonna fight, now that we’re free.
It’s like, Yeah. Now we’re gonna fight other Reds because you guys were the Gammas, and you guys always won the laurels, and you were helping them. The whole point. Like, do they not see that? I know.
But, no, they don’t. You know what I mean? It’s and also when there’s a giant war going on, it’s hard to, like when a new society is created, it just it can be bedlam. And it’s kind of what’s going on. The real problem with Darrow.
He should have spent more of his it’d be like George Washington beating the British and being like, well, we gotta go establish democracy everywhere now. I’m, like, leaving The US, like, in the infancy stages. Like, no. You gotta develop. And also ten years, I like how Lysander is, like, ten years is too long.
To overthrow an established government, that’s gonna take fifty years at minimum. Like, that’s just like, The US really wasn’t a good country until I don’t know when we’ve ever been a good country. But, you know what I mean? Like, we really There was a possibility period. Yeah.
But the civil war happened, what, a hundred years after or seventy five years after? Like, it things were still not established very well. So, yeah, I think the ten year barrier for a a successful society is pretty crazy from Lysander. Yeah. The I and it’s interesting perspective, this idea of this, like, George what would George Washington do if if and we’re just using I know you’re not saying, like, George Washington did all these things.
We’re not who knows? But, you know, we’re not that good at American history. But my the interesting thought there is that, yeah, he’s not gonna go and go to all these other countries and say we have to do democracy here, but what if all those other countries were in your backyard? Because we couldn’t do anything. We’re a a giant nation on the other side of the globe from, you know, England and these other places.
But in this world where it’s a solar system that you can get from one place to another so quickly, it’s like, hey, there are enemies. You know, enemies are always at the gate because they can just show up in their spaceships. And you have this you know, the Ashlar’s just giving them the runaround, so that’s why Darrow thinks that, like, oh, I just gotta finish this thing so then I can turn around, and we can then start figuring out how to govern the society. But, unfortunately, as you’re trying to finish this thing, one, it’s dragging on, and, two, the society still has to run. So Yeah.
You’re putting together your own house before you start going fixing other people’s houses is what I would say. You know what I mean? Yeah. Stuck down. Yeah.
I got it. No. Like like it. It’s interesting what you brought up about the the narrators because my only other stock down after you burned my router die guy was, the unfreezing process, stock down. Never.
Never stock down. Well, because due to the unfreezing process, I cannot control the volume of my voice, which is how I felt about the narrators in this. Lysander’s narrator is so quiet compared to Tim Gerard Reynolds, who does Darrow, that I would be listening to this on my audiobook, and I’d have, like, a Lysander chapter going, and it’d be on blast. And then all of a sudden, it would switch to a different narrator, and it would, like, blow my eardrums out. So and and then, Lyria, like you said, was, like, pretty quiet and meek.
So it was every different Yeah. Everyone was different. It it seems like they didn’t produce it well or something, that the levels were all off. So I found myself I don’t bit more on that. Car.
So when I listened to it just on my phone, it was fine. I didn’t notice it. But when the car, I would I had the volume up to, like, 30 on my car thing, which is super high. I’m like and then they’d talk and it’d be like an action scene. I’m like, oh my god.
My ear. Jesus. Yeah. It was the same for me. Like, I’m I’m listening on CarPlay.
You know, I got a new car. I’m like, oh, loving it. You know? Driving around, it’s been beautiful out. If I put the window down even like a crack, I couldn’t hear it unless I was going max volume.
Yeah. But it’s beautiful, and I wanna have the windows down. So I I was I was like, I’m gonna blow these speakers out just trying to hear what Lysander has to say. Yeah. So I was gonna that was my that was my finish was they they need you to engineer the next one.
Well, I guess they’re already all out. Maybe they need to. I mean, people probably have listened to this and are like, you may be the worst audio engineer you’ve ever heard. Well, my guy, Dan Carlin, who I love, absolutely love. I’ve been listening to a lot of hardcore history lately and common sense.
I just love Dan Carlin. But all of his comments is people like, you need a better sound engineer. You need a better sound engineer. Because he gets so excited when he reads quotes Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That he’s just, like, goes up 10 octaves in a quote, and people get really upset about that. So if it works for him, it’ll work for us. I’m I am mad about it. What else do you have for Sucked Down?
Last one, big reveals before you die, Sucked Down. I think Game of Thrones really did this best when Lady, Olenna, is that her name? Reveals Olenna. Yeah. That she poisoned Joffrey and she’s like, tell her I did it, you know, type the ending thing.
It was amazing. And she’s just about to die when she does it. And this one, we we meet the Ashthorpe and he’s like, by the way, you guys are all slaves. You’ll always be slaves to me. And I kid after your kids, and they’re like, what the fuck?
And he just sits there and he’s like, oh, shit. And they just burn him alive. I’m like, maybe wait until you’re about to die before you reveal this of It’s not like the smartest plan. You know what I mean? Or just die with the secrets.
Like, what what are you doing? Yeah. That’s why that was one of the reasons why I thought Darrow was gonna go, like, hard in the paint of being a bad guy because Apollonius or whatever gives him the look as he’s about to burn him alive and Darrow does the the head nod, like, yeah. Let’s do this thing. Oh, okay.
You know? Yeah. So that was, like, another thing I was like, oh, oh, okay. I mean, I know Darryl’s a little fucked in the head, and that’s one of the things we love about him. But, yeah.
You know, burning people alive is just, like, not super cool. To your point, it was, serendipitous. You know? They buy the ash, die by the ash, if you will. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. Shouldn’t have been called the Ash Lord. Should have been called the, like, die peacefully in my sleep lord. What was your favorite part of the book or your favorite storyline?
And I also want my rankings now. Yeah. I would say, Ephraim, number one for me. Thought he was a really interesting character. We also haven’t got a ton of relationship stuff outside of Darrow and his wife from the first book.
So it was an interesting take on that. Like him intrigued, you’re saying? Yeah. And like how, like, oh, well, yeah. I guess I could see how you he hated Darrow and anyone that, like, was kinda around that.
Well, because he was in Ephraim was in the rising and participated in the rising and obviously saw some messed up stuff and participated in some messed up stuff and got out of the rising, became a insurance adjuster or whatever, and now he does heists or whatever the case is. You know, he’s kind of a man for hire, if you will. I will agree with you. I mean, I’m not gonna agree with you that his is the best storyline, but I thought his was my number two because one, there was like cool stuff going on. Like, he was he was doing cool stuff and he’s an interesting character, but also just he’s so broken.
You know, he’s just such a broken human being. Like, he’s a good person inside and you can tell that he’s such a good person, but he does all of these things that they’re not, like, necessarily bad things, but they’re so self destructive. Like, you know it’s he knows it’s not gonna turn out well for him. I mean, even, you know, contemplating committing suicide at one point. So he knows these things aren’t gonna turn out for him, but then he finds Lyria, and he forms this bond with her that he did not expect, and, you know, maybe that’s gonna pull the humanity back out of him.
Well, he’s the perfect lead in, what’s those those, like, Sin City? What’s that kind of movie called? A noir? Yeah. He’s, like, perfect, like, noir guy.
Like, where he’s, like Yeah. Hates everything, hates everyone, does does the most shitty things. But at the end of the day, you’re like, he’s a good guy. Yeah. He’s a he’s a morally opaque human being who, you know, has, like, a good heart.
He’s a good guy that does that does bad things, except he’s not walking around calling people like toots and slapping them across the face or something like that. That’s what you need to do as a noir? Yeah. Well yeah. Yeah.
You ever read the Maltese Falcon? You ever read that book? Yeah. It’s a it’s a great book, and it’s a classic, but it’s just funny for that time period where if there’s a woman that’s, like, talking, having an opinion, it’s like you just slap her around and you just say, you know, get get a grip of yourself, woman. You know?
It’s like, what? So Efren was your number one. What’s your number two? Darrow, I think, is number two. Lysandre, I’m guessing is near your number one, but I thought he was interesting story, but at the same time, he’s a he’s a baby back bitch.
I already said that, and then Lyra’s four. What about you? Yeah. I think that’s fair. Lysandre’s my number one.
It’s not necessarily because of Lysander. I think the Rym storyline is was the most interesting story. That was very Game of Thronesian to me, you know, with this inner fighting between husband and wife and, you know, for a power struggle that eventually leads to the leads to the husband having to gets, sentenced to death, but does this crazy walk into the you know, out in the wild or whatever the case is. And she doesn’t want him to die, but that’s just the way it goes when the government gets involved. And so Lysander’s, a witness to all of this.
So it’s it’s interesting because it’s his perspective, but of these other customs and this whole unfolding storyline of what’s going on on the rim. So that’s why I liked the Lysander storyline the most. I just thought that was the most interesting from that perspective. And then Ephraim, and then Darrow, which I’ll get into probably in in my hates, and then Lyria. So Okay.
That was that was my four. Did you have, like, a specific part of the book or that you enjoyed? The the necklace blowing up in the the ship was I thought it was pretty because you you they don’t tell you what the heist is gonna be, what it’s around. So you’re kind of just like, hey. What?
What’s happening? So I I thought that was, I thought that was probably the best scene. Yeah. That was cool. I think probably for me was the the Cassius duel because I was like, how is this gonna work?
You know, he does that first duel and he wins, and you’re immediately like, okay. Cassius is gonna win. They’re gonna free him, and, you know, he’s somehow gonna get involved in this. And then she sends, like, her next nephew down. And and then once again, you realize, oh, there’s politics here because now as he’s killing all these people, now they’re like, all those people are turning on Cassius even more and then aligning themselves with the the queen or whatever on the rim.
So Dido or whatever her name was. So that was was interesting, and then also just, like, you know, I love a good duel, and he has, like, five of them in a row. So, that was kinda cool as well as the first Lysander when they find the ship, that, like, almost alien esque interaction where they find the the broken down ship and it’s full of obsidians and they have to, like, fight their way out. They get Seraphina, but they have to, like, leave the rest of the the other people. So I was like, sorry.
Sorry. Not sorry. I thought that was that was a good part too. What about characters? We have a bunch of new ones, obviously, like you said at the top.
Ephraim, Lyria, Tongueless, the Ashlord, we actually, like, meet. Volga, Ephraim’s, number two. The Duke of Hands, who’s the syndicate guy, Seraphina, Diomedes or Diomedes, Apollonius, Rona, who we even even talked about, who’s Darrow’s niece, who is 1000000% gonna die. Never never thought that was not gonna happen. It’s like, I promised your dad I wouldn’t let you die.
It’s like, okay. So she’s dead. There’s some other ones I missed. Were any of those, your favorite characters or Yeah. Just, like, the big part.
I think I said at the top. I had a tough time, following Haltic characters because they’re Yeah. They’re all Greek Yeah. There’s a lot. Roman names, and they’re all, like, Aorra and Ra, you know, and whatever stuff.
I’m like I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on here. So, I mean, I’ll stick with Ephraim for that. And then as, like, a side person, I did, like, Tungus. So that that was a a nice character. So I like Tungus too.
I like Tungus. Speaking about it, I guess we just like Obsidians because I was a big fan of Volga. Yeah. I was right too. Good call.
Effor’s number two. She she knows him. She knows what he’s, like, trying to do. She also knows that he’s, like, a good guy. You know, she’s almost like the the angel on his shoulder.
Yeah. And so so I liked I liked her a lot. I’m I’m intrigued by Apollonius and Diomedes. I’m I’m intrigued by them. Because Apollonius is what’s that guy’s name from the last one who was Darrow’s friend but was also, like, a little messed up in the head, and Lorna Al Arkos ended up killing him, like, in the basement before he could kill the younglings, Titus or something like that.
Whatever. It’s his, like, older brother is who Apollonius is. So, and he seems like an absolute psychopath. So, I’m I’m intrigued to see what happens there. And Diomedes is, like, the super badass, you know, the best fighter from the rim.
So I’m intrigued to see what happens with him as well. So, yeah. There’s there’s but, yeah, I agree. There’s a lot of characters. It was hard for me to follow.
That’s what I need to make. This is a TV show. I can start to see see the people here Game of Thrones in. Yeah. Combine some of these characters into one because I’m too dumb to follow all of them.
What about Love Hate? Let’s get into that. What do you love about Iron Gold? I just like being back in the world again. I think I liked it more than you did, but I just, I think it’s a masterpiece.
It’s literally, like, every time Really? I I’m not Not this book specifically. I just think the world he’s built. Yeah. I mean, like, just the whole concept of, like we we, like, learned about, like, helldivers, and that was, like, where I thought the book was gonna be about.
It was gonna be a mining book. Like, that’s what it started on. And now we’re in the rim, and we’re learning about new like, the society norms in the rim. They don’t have mirrors in the rim. You could make a whole book on just the rim.
You know what I mean? Where it’s, like, that’s just a small part of the book of the fourth book, which I don’t know. It just seems to keep on opening up and keeps on getting bigger and bigger, and you just don’t not for one second am I, like, not thinking this is a real world. The whole time I’m in it. I’m just like, oh, yeah.
Yeah. Like, obviously, they’re in the rim now. Like, yeah. It makes sense where they are. I think they’re in different places, different characters.
So I just think it’s super, super well written and well thought out. And, yeah, I I I just really like it. Have you seen those digital images that people make online? I feel like I see them on Reddit here and there where it’s, like, a very simple picture of something digitally created and then you zoom in on it. Oh, and it’s like a little keyhole.
Yeah. In that keyhole is like another story or like another picture and you, like, keep zooming in on one thing and it’s that’s how I feel like he’s created with this universe, is that you think you kinda have everything under wraps, and then it’s not like he shows you something new. It’s just like something that was referenced before he zooms in on, and you realize, oh my god. There’s so much life here too. Yeah.
And then you go somewhere else, and you zoom in on that. And it’s like, oh my god. There’s there’s so much here too. Like, it was all it was all there. And I agree with you.
It’s very well done. My love, and it’s kinda related to that I guess, is with this book, we we get a little of it all. You know? There’s there’s heists. There’s kidnapping.
There’s a rescue mission. There’s covert assassination ops. There’s prison break. There’s space battles. There’s, you know, diplomacy happening in multiple different places.
There’s a ton going on. And this book compared to Dark Age, which when I started, I was like, this book’s thirty three hours long. Holy shit. But the Iron Gold isn’t that long. It’s, like, twenty hours.
So Yeah. And it feels like it’s much shorter than that. It felt much shorter. Did. Yeah.
So I when I finished it, I was like, I can’t believe I finished this. This that was that flew by. So, yeah, if you want if you like any of that stuff, you really get all of it. So, you know, there’s duals like I talked about. You know?
It’s like there’s there’s a little bit for everybody, and it’s like one of those ice cream parlors that you go to that has the the belly busters, what we used to have at Chadwick’s, RIP, that place. But you go there and have, like, 27 scoops in one bowl. Like, yeah, it might be a lot, but you’re gonna enjoy it Mhmm. For at least the first half hour until you’re all bound up the next day like Keith. What else what else, Jill?
I don’t remember what scene this was. I think it was when they get captured, but the exploding handcuffs like the movie Swordfish, where if they run away from them, then their handcuffs explode, blow their arms off. I like that. I like the all I already mentioned too. They’re they’re all the rim stuff, like, they’re returning to dust.
It was kinda, like, very silo esque almost, their own society, which is kinda funny. It’s interesting how they’ve got they’re, like, so advanced, and they’re golds, obviously, and so they have all the technology and whatnot. But, you know, they’re they’re living on rations. Like like, the whole family is even, you know, the Yeah. The head of the golds, they’re like, alright.
We only eat meat once a week. It’s like, what? What? And when we eat meat, we have a small portion. It’s like, oh, okay.
Okay. Good. Sounds terrible. But, I feel like those are almost like the more badass fighters then. Like, those are like the Spartans.
But we’ll I guess we’ll find out later on. My my other love was, besides the multiple point of views, which I loved about this one, which we already talked about. My other love was the few homages we get in here, and I feel like Pierce did this in the other books, to varying degrees of success, and sometimes they were over my head, but I did notice a few of them. He says, House Barca sends their regards, Sev Sevro says that, which is a Game of Thrones reference, for the Republic, which I’m pretty sure was a Star Wars reference. Like, it was tied in pretty well, but I’m I’m pretty sure it was a Star Wars reference.
They called Carl Carl Sagan, like, a great philosopher from thousands of years ago or something like that. I’m like, oh, okay. Shout out to Carl Sagan. And then, of course, the prison warden, I think it’s Apollonia or one of them is talking about the prison warden’s rug, and he says that rug really ties the room together, which is right out of Big Lebowski. Like, that was very clearly a Big Lebowski reference.
There’s no question about that one. So I like how he throws those in there. You know, he’s having fun. You can tell he’s having a good time. Yeah.
I like it. What about hates? I think I said most of my hates. I think just too many names and moving parts that got me a little bit, I’m not a I think, like, hardcore fantasy people would be, like, finally, this is what we need. Whereas me, I’m, like, still amateurish, you know.
I I’m I still need to be kind of spoon fed a lot of this stuff. Yeah. I agree. I’m I’m the same way. Didn’t you read Game of Thrones, though?
Well, Game of Thrones for me was so deep of an obsession that I was spending time on the Internet in between reading, like, looking up the houses. It was like I was doing side learning. So if they if they had that or if I was that interested in this or or I didn’t have bats and ants and a baby, I I might be I might be interested in finding the wiki, but I’m I’m always nervous to look at the wiki, especially like, if we were this is the the last book or we’re, like, there’s no new books out yet, and I go to the wiki and do a research. But I’m nervous to click on someone’s name. They’re, like, yeah.
Of course, he dies in book five. You know, I’m like, goddamn it. So I don’t wanna do that. For Dungeon Crawler Carl, I, like, needed the wiki because there’s, like, you it’s almost like Magic the Gathering or something like that, like the Dungeons and Dragons where who these characters are, what their skills are, all that stuff, I needed to know. This one, I didn’t wanna dive into the wiki either.
But my only hate is the same as yours, really. It’s that well, one, I feel like I don’t know Darrow’s crew anymore. You know? He had the howlers. I knew all the howlers in the first three books.
You know? When a howler died, it was I’m pulling my wolf cloak uptight. I’m feeling sad. And and this time, I’m like, I don’t really know. He has, like, Thessalonia or someone.
Alexander, who is Lord Alarghos’ grandson. Like, I get that, but I also I’m not attached to him at all. Like, the only one with Severo. There’s Pebble and Clown are in there, and they’re married now, which is I’m like, okay. Cool.
But they’re not really a part of it. Those are our ride or die was, you know, the wolf cloaks. And now I I don’t really know them, so I don’t know who’s surrounding Darrow that’s helpful. You know? So that’s a problem.
And then I think it’s also I’m I think I’m just not good at visualization or something because it was hard for me to visualize some of the stuff that was going on, whether it be Darrow’s having this this battle to get to the Ashlord’s place or whatever the case was. And I just couldn’t really see it in my head. There was, like, Sevro set off a nuke, and they’re doing this fighting, and they’re in star shells, but they’re fighting a ton of golds. I I couldn’t I honestly just couldn’t visualize it, which took me I feel like I wasn’t getting the most out of it that I could be, and and it’s almost 99% my fault. I’m not gonna blame this on Pierce Brown for, like, not being good at explaining things, but it was just tough for me, personally.
Yeah. I could see that. I was just picturing, like, a moat, and there was, like, a big thing. Is that right? Is that what it was?
Like, an island I have no idea if you’re asking the wrong person. That’s what I was I was like, alright. So I’ll just make up what I think is going on. I saw in my head, I saw, like, the Space Needle, like, the Seattle Space Needle. And Oh, okay.
And he was at the top, and they were on, like, you know, a desolate ground, and they were fighting there, but then there’s, like, this space needle that they need to get to. And that could be so far off what was happening. It’s like we’re playing a game of telephone, and I was explaining this story to someone, and and Pierce Brown’s like, nope. That’s not it at all. It’s like I sat down at the French Laundry, which is a really good restaurant, and I had just had hot soup for breakfast.
So I just couldn’t taste anything is how I felt. Like, I know it was good. Right. I just couldn’t taste it. For breakfast guy or I don’t know.
Why are you doing that? Yeah. Big soup for breakfast. Well, you should have said oatmeal or something. Yeah.
Yeah. Oatmeal. Some super hot oatmeal. Burn your tongue on bacon. Mhmm.
Well, that’ll That’s hard to do. It’ll be bacon grease, I guess. That would be the only way to do that. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I just drink bake bacon grease, of course. Helps hangovers. So Alright, Keith. What do you give it out of five? Like, we’re doing Goodreads style.
What do you give it out of five and who’s the book for? Yeah. I think it’s for fantasy people and people who like the first three. I think, so far I would say, yeah. I’d pick it up but I’m also banking that the next two are gonna be better.
I I give it a four out of five. I think that’s just because I like the world a lot. I don’t think I think it was the fourth best book so far. Mhmm. So the other ones I mean, Red Rising’s a five for me, the first book.
The other two are probably like 4.7 fives, you know, like that’s I think that’s how high they are. So this one getting a four is probably a pretty big downgrade, but I still think it’s I’d read I’d read 10 more of these books. So, you know, it’d basically be like a Harry Potter book, like the book two or, what’s the one I didn’t like? Book three or book five maybe? Like, I’d read those again a 100% of the time.
So no no no issues, but just wasn’t the best of the series, I would say. How about you? Yeah. And you couldn’t you couldn’t read this series without reading the other trilogy. Right?
Yeah. I don’t think so. Yeah. You No. I don’t I don’t think so.
Too much going. You gotta introduce way to people. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.
Plus, you don’t really know the stakes. Like, you’re not Yeah. Right. Right. Right.
If you pick this up, you may think Dara’s a bad guy. You know? Who knows? Yeah. So it’s I mean, to who who would read it, it has to be someone who’s read the first three books, which is unfortunate because it really limits the scope.
But then go read the first three books and what are you doing? What are you doing, people? Go read the first three books. I give it a 3.75 because I feel like we have to do increments of point two five, and it’s more than a three five, but it’s probably less than a three seven five. But I’m going three seven five.
So that’s alright. That’s alright, man. That’s disappointing. Hopefully, the next one gets back. What do you mean disappointing?
Three seven five is a great score. Alright. Three seven that’s probably the best score I’ve given out of besides, like, all the colors of the dark this year. Mhmm. Yeah.
Okay. I’m with you. I think it’s probably the weakest out of the four, but by no means does that mean it’s bad. It’s a three seven five. It’s like I’m I’m excited to be back here.
I got, you know, some some of my boys back, some some new characters who I’m starting to enjoy, and and a world that I’ve been excited to get back into. So so, yeah, I’m I’m excited to read Dark Age, although I’m, like, I don’t know, an hour in, and I realized that I still have, like, thirty two hours left. Just don’t look at the clock and just just let it go. Yeah. I guess so.
Alright. Well, that was Iron Gold, and we’re gonna go quick and get, Dark Age, out the door next. But for those of you that have Spotify premium, both of these books are available on Spotify premium, so you don’t have to buy them on Audible. So, you know, that’ll save you a credit unless you’re just racking up credits like Keith over there. That was Iron Gold, and we’ll have, dark age coming up soon.
Alrighty. Good times, Keith. Indeed. Alright. Bye now.
Bye now.
