Dark Age (Red Rising Book 5) – Pierce Brown – Episode 128
The Buddies are back to continue their “summer saga series” (say that 10 times fast) with Pierce Brown’s “Dark Age,” the fifth book in the Red Rising universe and second in the Iron Gold trilogy. This new trilogy is basically Game of Thrones in space, but with more creative ways to die. The Buddies got to discussing summer camps, habituation, the Black Knight from Mondy Python, and how this book made the battle of Helm’s deep blush. That and much more. So grab your anti-radiation meds, practice your habituation techniques (you’ll need them), and join the Buddies as they navigate a book where Mercury finally gets some respect and literally everyone you like probably dies!
Intro/Book Summary (0:00-4:29)
Stock Up/Down (4:30-44:23)
Favorite Scene/Character (44:24-50:23)
Love/Hate (50:24-58:59)
Conclusion (59:00-1:02:02)
NEXT BOOK: Light Bringer (Red Rising Book 6) by Pierce Brown
Transcript for SEO purposes 🙂
Alright. Welcome to Book Club. I’m Dylan, here with the man who howls my name, Keith. What’s up, buddy? Welcome to the light age, kid.
Oh. I see what you did there. Little flippity doo dot. Here at the Moneybulk Club, we’re gonna have some best sellers, and this week we’ll be discussing twenty nineteen’s Dark Age by Pierce Brown. It’s a continuation of the second trilogy of Red Rising if you’re following along.
If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read or reach out to any past episodes, you can visit our website, buddybookhub.com or slide into our DMs on, X or Instagram, buddybookhub podcast. You can listen to us iTunes, Spotify. Please download and subscribe. Give us a five star review. Please and thank you.
Yeah. So we’re continuing our our summer saga series. Say that 10 times fast. Of the second trilogy, Red Rising. We love the first trilogy.
We’re back at it. We read Iron Gold. If you have listened to that episode, hit the pause button. Go back. Check that one out.
Spend thirty hours reading that book. And then spend thirty hours reading this book. We list the audiobooks. I don’t even know how I would find the time to crack open a a physical book and and finish this. I don’t know how many pages it is I should check.
But I think when we did Iron Gold, I was I started to talk about, like, Taungeless’s death, and you were like, hold on. That happens in dark age, because I just started reading that. And it all kind of is now blending together. So I think before we get into our typical categories, if you could kind of give me a general synopsis of what’s going on with our characters and kinda what happened in the book because I need a little bit of a refresher before we dive into it, and so do our listeners, I’m sure. Yeah.
It feels like we’re, like, season four, season five of a TV show right now. We’re like, what happened in season two? You know? And that was this book. Alright.
So I’m gonna try to run through this as quick as possible. So Darrow’s side, Iron Rain on Mercury. Darrow uses the Storm God machine to fuck everyone up. Mhmm. Puts Orion in charge of it, who promptly causes a mass tidal waves and kills a bunch of civilians.
He has to override the system and kill her. She’s done. Orion, RIP. Ephraim is with Severo and Daryl’s kids hanging out with Sefu, picked them up, you know, training and doing whatever they need to do there. Mustang and I’m doing this in sequential order of the book, so I’ll get to them Okay.
Going as we go. Mustang is playing politics. Looks like she pulled some, you know, house of cards backdoor dealings. Probably, everyone in the Republic, Senate basically gets poisoned, delves into chaos, led by a clone, Abomination, aka The Jackals back, Adrias. Jackal.
Yeah. She ends up escaping believing several clown and pebble behind. Lysandre experiences war for the first time, realizes it sucks, but uses the mind eyes to escape, Goes through all these different trials and tribulations, finally becomes a prisoner of Atlas. He and Atlas devise a plan to escape and infiltrate Darrow’s crew. Lyria and Volga are being tortured, held hostage by Viktra.
She lets them go but Volsung Fa, a new mysterious obsidian comes into play and run runs their ship from the ground. They crash land. Lear gets a couple cool pieces of tech out of her head. They eventually run into the Red Hand who captures Vikture, kills her baby, and Lear starts a mini revolution, fucks them all up. Mhmm.
Back to Volsung Fa. He comes to Mars, which Ephraim and the Obsidians have taken over. He kills Sephi, gets all the Obsidians And Volsung Fa is, like, her grandfather, are they? Last couple of ones. Lysandre infiltrates Darrow, gets the Master Maker to make, like, the MP fuck up everything.
All the lights go down. Darrow and his crew are screwed. Lysandre throws a sling bait through his heart. Cassius comes to the rescue, saves them. And lastly, Lysandre bows down to Atlania at at Atlan what’s her name?
Atlania? Yeah. Now now I’m all screwed up. But yes, we got it. Marries her and although he knows she killed her, his parents and, he and Apollonius got some scheming behind behind their backs going.
That’s does that summarize everything? Did I miss anything? I feel like there’s a lot going on now. And Apollonius is the guy that they free that Daryl freed in the last book. Right?
Correct. The Minotaur Yeah. Of hers. I’m thinking for most books, it’ll be shorter than this, the the the summary. So we can do this, but this one has so much going on.
Yeah. I’m So that’s the story. Still bungled. It was helpful for sure, but my brain my brain is to Atalantia. Atalantia.
Yeah. That’s a lot of syllables. Never name your kid with too many syllables. It gets confusing. Let’s dive into some standard categories, stock up, stock down, for those that are not familiar.
Stock up? Things that are good? Stock down? I don’t know. We don’t even know.
What do you have for stock up? Perspective stock up. Oh. This book gives a really great view on perspective. Few examples of this is how people perceive Darrow.
So on Mercury, he’s basically committing genocide. Everyone there is, like, this guy is the worst. Like, he just literally flooded everyone, killed a ton of civilians, even though he’s, like, trying to give medicine and things to them after the fact. Yeah. He’s, like, passing out anti rats and, they’re, like, alright.
Fuck you, dude. And from his perspective, we see yeah. He’s doing that. He he’s the one that had to kill his like, one of his best friends, Orion, and to stop the genocide. I have to do something I don’t wanna do in order to because it’s the for the best thing.
And it all in all honesty, Orion’s probably right. Like, if they just flood the whole thing, probably better for the Republic for everyone, but he doesn’t do that. Perspective there. Then we have, like, the Vox perspective and getting manipulated. And And then we also have, like, the Viktor versus Lyria perspective where I was kinda always on Lyria’s side and then Viktor is like, you brought a bomb into the ship we told you.
Like, you’ve been told thousands of times never to take something in there and that you don’t know of where it came from. Like, you’re you’re pretty dumb. You’re you’re the one that’s actually responsible. And I was like, oh, I didn’t think about that. So I kinda switched my perspective once I heard hers.
But my favorite by far perspective is we get early on in the book. Daryl meets Lysandre for the first time in battle. I’m like, oh shit, here we go. Like, he’s gonna recognize him. He’s gonna do all this stuff.
Nope. Just chaos. Daryl runs through him so quickly. Just fucks up his whole squad. Everything gets dismantled.
And from and from we’re seeing Lysander’s perspective of it, and it’s, like, the most gruesome, like, intense battle. And then the next chapter is Darrow’s perspective, and he’s, like, so, yeah, it was pretty easy. We went through, like, a quick skirmish. That was all he says about it. Yeah.
It’s, like, yeah, we walked by him. No big deal. Other than that, everything’s been pretty easy. I was like, holy shit. So pretty hilarious, but I just love the perspective.
Yeah. I thought that one was funny because of well, maybe not funny. But just how crazy vicious and I know they say berserkers with the obsidian stuff, but how Darryl almost goes berserker when he’s in these battles. And Lysander is not definitely not ready for seeing what this actually looks like. Because Lysandre is he’s never been in a big battle like, he’s been in fights, but never a a battle.
So having this be his first experience and I did like that when he’s coming down in the iron rain, and he’s pretty much shitting his pants, which even though he’s, you know, Octavia Alloon’s grandson, he’s got all of the training necessary. He’s not peerless. He hasn’t been in a fight. So to see that happen, and then the first thing is Darrow’s men, like, basically just crush him immediately and loses an eye and burns all this terrible stuff. He’s, like, Anakin on Mustafar.
It it was, that would that was cool to see. And and Yeah. I do agree with you with the perspectives of two because the the people of Mercury, they’re thinking, yeah. We were enslaved before, but we were alive. Our our hair and teeth weren’t falling out from radiation poisoning.
We weren’t starving and stuck in the crossfires of this battle that’s had been raging. We were, you know, yeah, we were subjugated, but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world now that we think about it compared to this. Yeah. It is funny because there are some Reddit threads about this whole decision Darrow to not just let Orion blow up Mercury, and people are pretty torn on it. It’s funny.
It’s like, this philosophy book I’ve got on Audible, you know, when they offer these two for ones. It’s basically like the short history of philosophy or something, and it goes through a bunch of different philosophizers and their ideas. And they talk about that thought experiment of a train’s going down the tracks. It’s about to kill three people. Do you pull the lever?
And so it only kills one. And how that’s seemingly so simple, but everyone will fight for one side or the other. If you pull the lever, you’re now killing that individual person while if you just kind of let it go and kill the three people, that’s not on you. But it feels like Darrows has that choice at every turn he makes. Like, power is tough to wield.
I don’t I wouldn’t even know how you mentally deal with it at the end of the day, especially because a lot of times you’re sacrificing your own men. You know, he pretty much sends Alexander on a suicide mission, and he he loves Alexander. You know, he’s the first person whenever anyone comes back to find their bodies or pretty much like weep over them or try to help them, whatever the case is. He’s so loyal to his people, but he knows that throughout this whole, initially a rebellion, but now trying to hold the republic together, all of his friends are gonna die, which is crazy. He has a nice moment in Sevro’s little his sacred space or whatever, his fortress of solitude in in the ship when he goes into Sevro’s place then.
I thought that was nice. Do you remember that part? Oh, when there’s, like, all these booby mines and stuff. Booby traps and yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That was cool. Yeah. For sure. Speaking about Mercury, that’s that’s my first stock up.
Underrated planet, you know, just in general. I feel like it gets the short end of the Sling Blade, if you know what I’m talking about, when it comes to our discussion outside of this book of the planets. If I was to ask you, Hey, name me another planet in our solar system, I wonder how many you would go through before you got to Mercury. I would guess four or five. And I appreciate that Pierce Brown decided to make it the focal point of dark age.
Do I know anything about Mercury itself? Absolutely not. If someone was to ask me a science question or something like that, I’d be like, Heliopolis is a main city in Mercury. That’s all I really know. But you know, I just thought it was cool how this book is pretty much focused I mean, obviously, there’s a lot going on.
But it’s primarily focused on Mercury and what’s happening there with, you know, the battle of the Ladon and eventually, like, the battle on Heliopolis. And it’s kind of the straw that stirs the drink of the whole story where maybe all of our characters aren’t on Mercury, but it like, what’s happening on Mercury is rippling through everyone else’s story. So I liked it. And before, you know, when we were reading Red Rising or like that, it it wasn’t even addressed. Like, the idea that Mercury it was just Mars and Luna, and now we have an entire thirty hour book that is focused on this battle that’s happening on Mercury.
So I dug it. Yeah. It’s gone wild too because most books are mostly sci fi would be like, oh, yeah. The the main places are is Earth and we’ll give you put points of intersection that you know and we’ll, like, you know, launch from Earth and do all these things from Earth and then we’ll we’ll have side missions maybe on these places. But this is like no Earth is the Earth is a side mission.
If we ever go to Earth, we’ll we’ll talk about it briefly but it’s really more like, whatever. Yeah. They reference Earth like here and there but it’s not That was where the escape was. Right? The person that escaped was on Earth?
Yeah. And then they also launched the the anti rad medication and stuff from Earth. There’s a couple Oh, yeah. Earth mentions in here. Yeah.
It’s, like, but in passing, essentially. Essentially. Yeah. It’s not there’s not big things that are happening on Earth at the moment, at least. And I’m not sure there will be because it seems like the next one’s setting up for Mars.
We’re going back to Mars. Mhmm. So we’ll see how that plays out. What else do you have for stock up? Lyria, stock up.
Oh, you were talking trash last last pod. This is a big book for her. Obviously, these were already written, but I’m pretty sure our boy Pierce Brown saw the notes I gave and immediately implemented them. Literally, the first couple sentences, Lyria says, she’s like, I’m tired of having other people decide my fate and dictate my life. I’m gonna take control.
I’m like, yes. Alright. Alright, Lyria. Let’s go. So she listened to me.
I mean, it also helped that she got, like, the, the implant midway and she became kind of a superhero, which was always nice. You love to see that. Figment. How she got it is pretty much in my mind. They said it’s like an octopus thing with tentacles that bend her body, but it seemed a lot like the matrix.
Right. The matrix. The little thing from the matrix that crawls into his belly button. Yeah. That’s exactly right.
We’re used to the the Red Rising series, Darrow being the smartest one in the room where he gets kinda tricked a couple times but he’s always has something up his sleeve or he always has a plan to outwit people. That’s not the case anymore, you know, where this is the one time Lyrio is like actually kind of fighting back and being the hero. Because we don’t really get much of a hero’s view in these two first two books. So it was really good to see. I also love that, like, red hand kind of revolution or she got her kind of her revenge, like, which is in essence, this book is about always been about the Red Rising series.
It’s just a big revenge book. I like the Red Hand stuff. Unfortunately, I don’t remember a ton of how Harmony was I know she was in Red Rising and whatnot, and she was part of the group that you’d when Mickey carved Darrow initially, she was part of that group. I know she had her own falling out, and that’d be an interesting perspective to hear because she seems like maybe one of the worst people in the book. Like, what she’s doing with the red hand is terrible.
But I did love that storyline, and it kinda came out of nowhere. Like, all of a sudden I mean, I’m gonna talk about it later, but all of a sudden, we got our our three girls together, and they’re kidnapped, and then and then Lyria’s leading this Mission Impossible. It’s her, Tom Cruise, Ana de Armas, leading a Mission Impossible, and it was it was great. It was great. Really enjoyed it.
The right hand kinda gave me vibes of, you know, like, Blood Diamond or there’s another movie of, like like, the African, like, tribes that, like, will take people when they’re young and manipulate them and give them drugs. That was kind of what the vibe I was getting. That or, like, the Taken vibe. Is that what happens in Blood Diamond? There’s another movie too with Idris Elba who does that.
Oh, yeah. African leader. Yeah. That one’s real. That one was a tough one to watch.
That was messed up. That’s like a Netflix movie, and he’s like a war he’s a warlord. I mean, those are two African Yeah. African war movies I’ve seen. That one is more in line with, I feel like, what you’re talking about because that’s, like, child soldiers, and he gets them pretty much addicted to drugs.
Well, that’s what happens at Blood Diamond. They said, I don’t remember. Blood Diamond? I got a rebuttal. Son?
Remember his son is, captured, and they put him into the gang, get him hooked on drugs. He, like, doesn’t recognize his own dad by the end of it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
I do kinda remember that. Gotta rewatch him. Good movie. My next stock up is the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Quest of the Holy Grail. Sparely a scratch or what is it?
‘Tis but a scratch. Yeah. I feel like he must be distantly related to Darrow. You know, Darrow gets a razor shoved through his body, and he’s like, nah. Tis about a scratch.
He just continues on like he doesn’t have a razor going from his chest to his back. And, you know, he goes back to their base or whatever on Mercury, and he’s walking around talking to people, doing stuff, and, like, he doesn’t have a razor that’s straight through him. He’s checking in on on people that, oh, Alexander’s dead. That sucks. Like, boss, you have a razor sticking through your entire body.
What it what are you doing? It wasn’t clear that he was alive. He’s definitely alive. Chest, and I’m like, that could be where part what part of the chest can you get something through you that won’t kill you? Because if it hits your heart, you’re dead.
If it hits your other side what’s in your other side? This is a biology class now. Keith. Is that your lung? Right?
It’s merely a flesh wound. Alright. Yeah. I’ll bite your legs off. Exactly.
That’s what it doesn’t make sense. Like, Cassius comes, which, by the way, told you Cassius was not dead. I told you. I told you he’d be coming back. Yeah.
And Cassius comes in in the last minute and saves the day. And Lysander says that Darrow, you know, evaded the trap again or whatever the case is, flew the coop. But that’s all we hear about Darrow and and or Cassius for the rest of the book. And granted, it’s, like, towards the end of the book. But what what?
Like, then we hear that he’s Darrow’s dead from his family, but they must not know what happened with him and Cassius. So I’m interested to see what happens. I don’t think they would just kill Darrow without it being more pomp and circumstance. But you you don’t know with Pierce Brown because, a couple of the deaths were like Seraphina, Lysander Land. It’s like, oh, Seraphina just got her head blown off.
So, woah. What? Seraphina was a big character in Iron Gold. Yeah. Yeah.
This book has fully become Game of Thrones at this point Yeah. Where don’t have a favorite character. Don’t get attached to anyone because they they’re very, very good chance they’re dying if their name’s not Darrow. Yeah. I have a I have a note on that, later on.
But, yeah. So Black Knight for Monty Python stock up. What else you got? Last one quick one on summer camps stock up. Oh, did you do summer camp as a kid?
I did briefly. I used to Overnight or daytime? Overnight. Yeah. That was for, like, a week.
A couple buddies really liked it. But I my summer camp was just I made a swim and tennis club. I just my parents dropped me off there every single day, and that that was my summer. Wow. Every single day.
How well did you swim in tennis club? Well, you you’ve seen me before. I’m super stoked. Yeah. You are the whitest person I know and stuff.
No. I mean, it was like a playground. I mean, it’s it’s awesome. Yeah. But anyways, Paxton and Elektra, they’re kind of held as wards or as hostages, but they’re kinda just having a good time.
Right? It sounds pretty fun. They’re, like Great. Practicing against other Obsidian, just dominating the shit out of them fighting. They’re, like, teaching them, which is imagine being, like, 12 years old being, like, these grown adult men, they need your help.
It’s like because they’re not really smart enough. And you’re, like, I can walk them through some shit. And they’re just held in super high regards. They’re basically talking direct. Imagine, like, being 12 and talking to the president of another country and being like, I’ll show you what to do.
I’ll tell you how to work things. So, yeah, it’s a great summer camp for them, elect and I like their dynamic. Like, PAX is Pax is really more, Mustang than than Darrow at this point. Mhmm. But I really like him.
And then Electra is, like, a perfect combination. I mean, both Darrow and Victor are psychos, but she’s you already see that coming through. So I I just I like their dynamics. And You mean Sevro in Victor. What did I say?
You said him. Sorry. But yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Sevro in Victor. Spitting image of her parents, and Pax seems a little more thoughtful. He’s definitely like, I agree.
He’s definitely more Mustang. But Well, also, Daryl hasn’t been around, so Yeah. He’s an absentee father. Pax has a little smart guy to him, the the TV show. He’s seemingly a genius, right, in terms of mechanical understanding, I mean, along with lots of other stuff.
But he just, like, builds bikes or builds crazy stuff that can be done. And he has also has some Anakin Skywalker in him at the end with Ephraim. He’s the pilot and flying this plane and telling everyone else, like, all the other all the other ships in their fleet what to do, and he takes down some spaceship that’s impossible to take down. He does it on his own. It’s, yeah.
He’s like a little Anakin, a little smart guy. I don’t know what’s going on. Woods. He’s Yeah. I guess Fernando Tatis junior, Ken Griffey junior.
I mean, he’s got he’s there. He’s just a child of a prodigy. I mean, that’s I mean, he is a prodigy of because his parents were prodigy. Yeah. Like, is it nepotism if he’s so good?
It it’s not. Right? It’s not like he they’re just being gifted this thing. No. Yeah.
Nepotism is for when you’re, like, given something that you don’t deserve. Like, sports and, fighting and smarts are all things that can’t be just given to you. You have to, like, you have to win them, you know. Yeah. So I mean, he also probably, you know, studied with the best teachers and and whatnot.
Yeah. That’s just more, like, advantages in life, which He’s got that. Can’t really do a lot about that. My next stock up is Helm’s Deep. So I’ll never forget seeing this Two Towers that is.
Lord of the Rings. For those that don’t know what Helm’s Deep is, shame on you. But I’ll never forget seeing it in theaters. My jaw just dropped because the movie itself is very long. And you watch the entire movie, and it gets to Helm’s Deep.
And you’re like, okay. Cool. Like, this is gonna be amazing. Gonna be a little battle, and then something’s gonna happen, but I don’t know yet. Well, it turns into a forty minute battle.
That Helms Deep movie, our Two Towers movie, Helms Deep, forty minute battle, holds the Guinness World Records for the longest cinematic battle. It was insane. So many great moments in that. And that’s pretty much what dark age is. It’s just an entire book of battles.
I mean, obviously, we talked about Mercury. Mercury is just one super long battle. The entire part one of the story is the battle of the Ladan, which isn’t even the entire battle that’s happening on Mercury. It’s just that battle of the Ladan. That’s the entire part one.
You think, oh, we get to a senate chamber. That’s gonna be nothing. Nope. Turns into this everyone’s poisoned, and there’s a battle, and Daxo gets his head ripped off or whatever the case is. I mean, hell, even Lyria is involved in two battles.
She gets a crazy space battle against wild obsidians and then one in a mine against the red hand. She herself takes part in two of them. I think the only place where there isn’t a battle is the spaceship time that it takes to get to a battle. That’s the only time there’s not a battle and the brief time when they’re on Mars with the Obsidians before that ends up turning into a battle. So, yeah, it was, if you like fighting and battle sequences, then this is the book for you because it’s pretty much just one long one.
And usually they wait until I was gonna say they wait until the the third installment before they bring that out, but Lord of the Rings, they did it in the second one. I guess they also did it in the third one, but they did it in the second one. So, yeah, maybe it’s a special with the second book in the series. It’s pretty crazy because if you think back to the original trilogy, there’s not many battles, but most of it was like strategy and manipulation. There’s like one battle, I feel like, in March.
Yeah. Well, they’re like the first book, the, like, Red Rising, they’re like, there’s a ton of skirmishes Yeah. Like battles Yeah. But the best parts of those are not like the battles themselves. It’s like, okay, here’s the strategy of why we’re gonna attack this way is because we need to get into their fort and steal the flat or whatever it may it was like this whole kind of strategy.
This is just like, alright. We gotta get to this point a to point b. Let’s run through some people to do that. Kind of so it is a little different. The only thing that I have a tough time with these kind of battles, and I’ve talked about this before, probably ad nauseam to anyone that listens, but it’s the being able to conceptualize them.
They’re talking like, the numbers they throw out for who’s involved, how many people are involved in these battles is crazy. They say, oh, we have a million legion out there. It’s like, you have a million people fighting? What? We lost a 100,000 in this battle.
How does that even especially with all this advanced technology. It was hard to kinda get. One of the things I did really like is that Lysander pod racing series when they’re trying to escape after after Atlas kinda lets him out and they’re trying to escape. So far. Yeah.
Well, I watched Andor season two. Crushed it. Loved it. So good. And then So good.
I’ve Alright. You you jumped on because you were worried, weren’t you? Yeah. I was worried. It’s so good.
And then over the last three nights when Caroline goes to sleep, I watch Rogue One in pieces. You had to watch Rogue One right away after it. Right away. Yeah. You had to.
Yeah. Caroline’s like, I’m super tired. I think I’m gonna go to bed. I’m like, no. Don’t.
Don’t. That sleepy time tea I slipped you. That was weird. I don’t know why you’re so tired. Yeah.
Rogue on it. It’s so good. It’s all to, like, an end start New Hope, obviously. Whatever. Not either or.
Anywhere. The Lysander Podres you seen, I thought, was super cool because they’re going on these bikes trying to get out of there, trying to get to Darrow’s men or whatever the case is. And there’s these, like, space guns are shooting down at them. You know? It’s like they’re not only getting shot from rail guns by people and snipers and whatnot.
But these space guns that are basically turning the sand to glass right in front of them, them, it was it’d be so cool to see. It’d be so cool to see on a big screen. It’d be so cool. Yeah. Stock up is being captured.
We watched, Man on Fire recently, Denzel. You seen that? Dakota Fanning. Mhmm. Yeah.
It’s about kidnappings in Mexico, Tony Scott movie. The Scott brothers, just love them both. But Great train movie. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. Unstoppable. Your favorite. But it’s talking about all these kidnappings. And these kids, it says I think it says in the opening credits, like 70% of the kids kidnapped die.
I was like, wow. That’s fucked up. You know, it kinda sets the scene for the whole movie. Not in this world that Pierce Brown has created. I’m pretty sure every main character got captured at some point during this book, and no one no one died out of their being captured as far as I understand.
We got Sevro being captured, Viktra, Lyria, Ephraim, The the list goes on. Obviously, Pax and Electra, no one dies. It’s like no one saw Austin Powers and did the did the Scott evil. Just just shoot them. Person that does it is Lysandre, which I was, like, no class.
Just no honor at all. Wait. When does Lysander do it? He shoots Alexander in the face. Oh, right.
Yeah. Just zero honor. Just none. Don’t You hate to say not necessarily a capture, though. Well, I mean, he also that was, like, the definition of, like, kinda shooting someone in the face by their back type.
I thought I thought it was more to me, it was more of Indiana Jones vibe of I I gotta get out of here. I don’t have the time to fight this guy. I’m gonna pull a gun out and shoot him. He was holding his, girl hostage. Yeah.
And he was like, alright. Like, fight me like a man. He’s like, okay. And he shoots him in the face. Yeah.
Indiana Jones. He’s got the guy coming at him, you know, trying to Well, you could’ve you could’ve been, like, put your weapon down. I’m gonna let you go, but you you’re letting me leave type of thing, but he did. Well, at least he didn’t kill Verona. Right?
Yeah. I guess he could’ve done that. He could’ve just Anyways He just broke a gun. Honor. Yep.
Okay. But, yeah, being captured, it’s not a big deal. You know? You’re you’re not a big deal. It’s a good point.
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s jump into stock down. What do you got for stock down? Being a battle worn vet, stock down, Darrow has been fighting wars for ten plus years now.
He’s we’ve already talked about he’s the ultimate strategist, strategist, whatever the word is. Mhmm. He’s pretty much seen every battle. He’s fought in every single type of one on one situation. He he he knows everything.
He’s rugged. He’s he has also, he’s, like, on the side training and, like, getting better. He’s constantly trying to, like, improve. I might be from book three. Sorry.
However, we see Lysandre. He gets dropped in the iron rain. He’s shitting himself. He’s terrible at fighting. Then he kinda goes in the mind eye mind’s eye, and then the next thing we know, he’s unbelievable.
But he’s beaten Darrow one on one. Riding a giant horse? Yeah. He’s, like, kinda become the superhero overnight. And I was like, what did he he has he been putting the time in or putting any sort of like, the thing with, like, a lot of these guys like Cassius, they they’re bred to be warriors.
They grew up, dueling. They grew up thinking about strategy. Even Pax is that’s happening too. They go to the academy. They fucking murder someone with their bare hands when they’re 16.
They’re they’re bread. Yeah. What the fuck has Lysandre done? He’s been a little bitch boy. I feel like Lysandre almost has a a little Jedi to him.
He’s got some some Mark Hamill aspects in that he has done his training. Right? Cassius has done all of his training, so in terms of one on one sword fighting. He’s also had talk about the trauma that he had growing up with his grandmother. You know, he tells this story about she walks up the stair, like, 250 stairs, and she blindfolded him and said, okay.
Go walk back down. He’s like, wait. What? And and then she threw a bunch of bird seed and totally messed just all this actual trauma to get him the right mind’s eye. What are you doing?
But I think the mind’s eye is almost like a Jedi superpower where he’s able to see things in a different way. And because of that, it makes him better. He just really hadn’t exercised that muscle enough in the moment that he needed it. You know? And so he does it in this book, and he’s a fast learner.
So he’s gonna quickly get on top of it. I do agree that, yeah, Darrow’s a badass and is maybe underrepresented, but at the same time, Darrow has this small force where Lysander’s at the end commanding a massive force. So it’s also that factor. So no matter how good you’re gonna be, when you go up for against, you know, 10 to one, it’s like Thermopylae. Yeah.
Those Spartans were good, but they still all died. Yeah. Alright. I I I just I would have been fine with Darrow fighting someone that’s like well nutritioned, hasn’t been out in the sun. Because like Lysandre’s had just as bad of a time in this war.
His whole voyage to get out of the desert was just as bad as Darrow’s, if not worse, where his whole whole face is torn off. Yeah. He stops on a landmine. He gets captured in a net. He’s, like, sitting out there, then he’s starved in prison for a bunch of days.
He it didn’t seem like he got enough medical attention for all the things that were going on to him. Right? Yeah. Well, I think the whole point is, like, when you see people get wounded, casualties in these wars is not a big deal if you’re a gold because, like, they’re expected and they have such good medical stuff now that they’ll just treat you up real quick. Whereas, like, probably if you’re a foot soldier, yeah, you know, not good.
Okay. My first stock down is habituation. Are you familiar with that word? Habitual means often. So habituation must mean oftenly at chewing.
Are you just pulling habituation from being a habitual line stepper? Yes. That’s right. I love that. So it’s a psychological human condition.
Right? It the the diminishing of a psychological or emotional response to a frequently repeated stimulus. So an example would be if you live in the city like New York City and there’s always a lot of sounds going on beeping horns, ambulances, all that stuff you eventually get used to it where you can clearly hear something that’s quieter or the fact that you’re able to sleep without any problems because you’re just totally used to that noise is habituation. Or let’s say that you go to and sit in a porta potty at, like, a music festival or something, and it smells absolutely terrible, but you have to poop. And you’re in there for five minutes, and then all of a sudden, it doesn’t smell so bad because, you know, you’ve gotten you’re habituating that, that scent.
You know what I’m saying? Yeah. Okay. So it’s a stock down because I love the porta potty example. I didn’t understand anything you said before that, and you told me that example.
I said, gotcha. Yeah. Locked in back. Now you get it. And you’re, like, very comfortable episode in the porta potty.
You’re like, this isn’t that bad. What was I upset about this? Yeah. Exactly. And you leave, and you’re like, Jesus Christ.
That was terrible. What did I thinking? Yeah. I mean, it’s even even at home. You know?
I might have a number two, and then the wife goes in there. She’s like, that smells absolutely rancid. No. It it smells good when you do it. That’s flies.
Roses. Once you go back, you realize, oh, yeah. That indeed does. So at first, with this book, I was taken aback with Tunglass’ death. We had just kind of gotten to know this odd Obsidian who seems pretty cool.
I’m like, oh, he’s gonna join the crew. This is gonna be really fun, and then he dies. It’s like, oh, well, that’s terrible. I’m really upset because I wanted to enjoy Tunglas more. By the time Ephraim dies at the end, I was like, oh, that’s too bad.
And then I just moved on to the next page. You know? He was Yeah. Your favorite character in the last book. He was I think mine or him and Lyria were up there for me.
I know. It was Ephraim. I I love Ephraim. I loved him in this book too. He was so good.
Mhmm. But there are just so many deaths that I had that habituation response to all of it where towards the end, it it it evokes no stimuli for me. I was not I was not stimulated in one way. I mean, check out this list. You got tongueless, Seraphina, Orion, Dancer, Daxo, Theodora, Freyhild, Ulysses, Harmony, Cephe, Xenophon, Ephraim, Alexander, Kalimdorra, all of them die in this book.
It’s Yeah. It’s wild, and some of them were characters from way the way back. Some of them were characters in iron gold. But iron gold’s a long book, so we really got to know these people. And and some of them were characters in iron gold and then in this book, and, you know, they’re all of a sudden gone.
It was it was wild to me. So, yeah, it’s it’s I like that Pierce Brown has kind of become, you know, George r r Martin where, like you said, don’t get too close to anyone because eventually they’re probably just gonna die. But at some point, it starts to lose its effect on me. And I’m almost purposefully not attached so that I can’t get hurt. Yeah.
No. I was gonna say that Ephraim, that that’s when it really solidified. Oh, this this is just Game of Thrones because you it was a really good character arc. He got back to Volga. You see that nice Yeah.
And he says, like, you’re my Etta. Like, you’re my family. It’s so nice. It was great. And we’re gonna send you off to here and you’re like, uh-oh.
No. That’s not don’t do that. That’s not good. You you they knew they weren’t just gonna be like, you know, here’s a quick meeting. I’ll come back to Volga.
We’ll be good to go. He was, like, uh-oh. Yeah. But then he’s got the whole ploy of always got the thing in his shoe. He’s gonna blow the other guy up.
He’s gonna get out of this. But I don’t even honestly know how it happened. It was, like, it went from him blowing the other guy up to all of a sudden That was was a suicide vest type move. Right? I think.
Was it? I don’t think so. But I think he knew it was gonna blow them all up. I think I think he knew I think he’s not even getting out of it. Okay.
Yeah. Well, fuck. Terrible. Terrible. Yeah.
I’m sad to not have Efrem. And Volga’s I’m I’m excited to see what happens with Volga because she she really grown me on this book. Do you have other stock downs? Yeah. Last one is just, Will Hunting stock down.
Good. You ever see Jay inside of Bob Strike Back? Of course. In theaters. Souls, The second Good Will Hunting, Good Will Hunting two they’re filming.
Remember that? Where where they’re like, now I’ve hit the books. I mean, you’ve lost a step and you’re no longer the young, hungry, angry guy anymore. And he’s like, uh-oh, you know? And so there’s a whole scene where they replay the, what you reading, Gordon Wood, you know, type thing.
How about them apples? So yeah. Apple supplies. And yeah. And and Will Hunting no longer is the the step.
That’s that’s what I think I I mentioned earlier. That’s what this book has become. We’re we’re in we’re in the the second version and the guy that’s the the hero that, you know, the scrappy, young, angry person is no longer the leader and the person that’s outthinking everyone. Everyone’s doing what he’s, been doing previously. So it’s tough it’s tough to watch.
And I mentioned, like, Lyrio being the only one that’s really kind of playing the hero role. But everyone else is kinda just, like, not the smartest person in the room anymore. You’re just kinda waiting to see how they react to something that they when they get third thrown a curve ball. So they’re, like, no longer taking initiative of now this is what we’re gonna do. They’re not gonna see us coming.
It’s not, like, well, they saw that coming. So this is what we have to do now. Like, oh, shit. They they are once up ahead of us again. You know, you look to, like, Lysander doing this.
You look to, like, Atlanta just done it multiple times. All these these people are kind of outsmarting them. Yeah. Lewis Talk to watch. And, the the clone.
Yeah. Yeah. The Yeah. Mustang was way behind. Her whole story arc in this one, unfortunately, is Yeah.
Yeah. What happened to Mustang being, like, the smartest person in the room? Like, she is not she is really not She’s well, now she’s trying to she has to get so many people on board to do stuff. She can’t just, like, do it on her own, or she tried to, but couldn’t. I don’t know exactly.
The whole thing is her saying she’s gonna save Darrow and then doesn’t, and then her feeling guilty because Cassius flew in there with one plane. It’s Rogue One. They didn’t wanna go and go to Scarif and get the plan, so they had to get Rogue One to do it. It’s the same same idea for those people following along. But, yeah.
Her her storyline’s okay. Unfortunately, I’m starting to like Lysandre a lot. I think he’s got his mind in the right place. He just needs to fine tune it. And I I don’t know how it’s gonna end, and I’m excited for the next book because of that.
He obviously wants whatever it was in the past with Gold, you know, being the head of the society. But he he’s a good person. You know, when he goes in the desert and he tries to mercy kill those reds who were impaled by Atlas, he you know, he’s he’s they’re reds. He has no reason to do that. He he was raised to believe that they’re not even human pretty much, but he does that even though it it backfires on on him.
But I’m just interested to see what becomes of him because he seems like he’s got his head in the right place, but it’s still not tuned exactly right. So how will this change now with the information at the end of the book that his grandmother assassinated his parents because, you know, his mom seemed like she was down with whatever her grandma her mom was not doing. I think it was probably her mom. But, you know, they she wanted to end the chaos that was happening within Gold. So we’ll see.
But but I like I like his character. So I’m I’m interested. I mean, you like him more than I do, I think. I I I think he’s very he still is, like, wants to do the class system which obviously, you know, I think is not if you had these type of people like a Lysander on your side for the Republic working to make that work, that would be more productive than him saying, well, the old way was really good for me. And, yeah, everyone else suffered.
Whatever. At least we had peace then. If he was like, you know what? I’m gonna reset the society, but I’m gonna become a red once it’s preset. Fine.
I respect that. You can’t be like, let’s reset to the society, and I’ll be at the top of it again. It’s like, no. That you’re not doing that for anyone but yourself. Yeah.
I think he can find somewhere in the middle that will fit everyone’s needs, but I have no idea. And I honestly don’t want this story to end cleanly. Like, there should be some area where you’re wondering, well, how is this gonna work out? What’s my thought? My next stock down, Eli Roth, stock down.
You familiar with Eli Roth and Glorious Bastards? What’s his what’s his name? The Jew bastard? The Bear Jew. Bear Jew?
Here we go. Yeah. Yeah. He’s also a great, screenwriter and and director. He’s directed a couple horror movies that you might be familiar with.
One, Hostel, to Green Inferno. I don’t know if you saw that one. I have not. Oh. I’m not big I’m not a big horror movie guy.
That’s too bad. Yeah. Hostel is known for how grotesque it is. And Green Inferno, which I have seen, equally grotesque. Yeah.
That that’s messed up. If if anyone wants to go watch that Amazonian tribe kind of thing, people go into some kids go into the woods to think they’re helping, you know, save the rainforest or whatever or help these lost tribes, and then the tribes just end up absolutely boiling them alive and messed up stuff. So, yeah, Eli Roth’s known for doing this kind of gruesome and grotesque horror movies, but Pierce Brown is out here making him look like a Pixar director with the shit that he’s got going on in this one. Like, Sephi’s death? Are you kidding me?
Yeah. That was rugged. What’s his I had this in my Luvs, by the way, but go go on. You had Sephi’s death in your Luvs? I had I had the the ruggedness of this book.
It went zero to it’s used to be a You book. Remember that? Yeah. For for a hot minute, it was a You book. And Yeah.
This is he’s telling her that she’s Sephi the Quiet so you can go to Valhalla if you stay quiet. As I legitimately peel your back off, cut through your ribs and rip your lungs out. You have to stay quiet throughout that whole experience. And then eat your heart? Yeah.
Yeah. And then eat your heart. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.
Ulysses’ death. Ulysses is a two hour old baby and they nail him upside down to a tree after bashing his skull in. Excuse me? What? Pierce, who hurt you?
Who hurt you? This is some fucked up shit. And that’s not even to mention all of the heads split in half and eyes popping out and people burning to death in terribly gruesome ways. Guys getting their legs blown off and drowning in bat guano until some sort of centipede eats them as they’re drowning in bat guano. Like, crazy.
Crazy. Pierce. I love it. It’s wild. It’s some wild stuff.
I just don’t know what’s going on in your head. But, you know, you see interviews with the guy. He seems like such a nice and unassuming man. But he’s got some he’s got some dark shit dark shit going on in his head that all came to that all came out. That might answer my question from the the first one.
What do you mean the first one? The the first one, I was like, I know. What’s going on with this guy? Because you can’t be a writer and be that attractive. Writers are just fucking curmudgeons that sit at home and type on the computer.
They look like me. You know? You can’t you can’t be both good looking and a a writer. Like, that’s not allowed to fall. George R.
Martin. Exactly. I was always like, there’s something off with this guy. I don’t trust him. And, yeah.
I’m just jealous of him immensely. Yeah. Well, that’s it. He’s just sick in the head. Perfect.
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. For our benefit because it it is Yeah. Descriptive in a great and horrifying way.
Do you have like a favorite part or favorite storyline throughout this one? We talked a bunch about different things. So any of those? Yeah. I think I mentioned Lyria.
I mean, I think all of the bad guy storylines were pretty good and good twists. Like the I mean, the red like, the thing is like the red wedding, you hate that type of thing. Right? But it’s such good. It’s so entertaining.
Yeah. I had that same exact feeling when the the poison stuff went down in the senate. I was like, oh, shit. And then, like, people start rioting, you know. That was that was a tough thing to to read.
Yeah. When they’re ripping the I was scared it was gonna get into, like, rapey territory with Mustang because people are grabbing at her and stuff like that, and that’s that skeeves me out. Luckily, it was just insane violence. But, yeah. I agree with you.
That was That whole process and then the turn of, like, where the I mean, this always happens where, like, someone thinks they’re doing something for, like, the benefit of the society. They’re, like, oh, I’m gonna, like, stab someone in the back, to help out, like, what I think. Oh, like, plebeas or whatever? Yeah. They’re not the one that’s actually they’re like the puppet.
The initial reason that you do try over to the government’s good and then the per most powerful person takes over and says, yeah, that’s cute. We’re actually gonna do what I wanna do. Now you do you’re doing it for a valid reason maybe, but, yeah, we’re not doing that actually. Yeah. That was another big miss by Mustang when she thought whatever that guy’s name was, Plebeus or Plutarch.
I don’t even remember what the guy’s name was. She’s like, oh, he’s behind this thing, but he’s an idiot. So why would she think that he was behind it? There was obviously something else going on. So Well, he was a good actor.
So I mean I guess you know? Like, she was he was able to hide it for this long, so that means you’re pretty good at something. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think the I already mentioned the Ephraim story arc.
I think it’s a great story arc in Red Rising fashion. We we get that arc and you feel like, oh, now he’s gonna be like a hero and he’s gonna, like, go maybe to Mercury and help out or he’s gonna do it and it’s like, now he’s dead. Yeah. So all those things combined, I would say Lyria in general was the best, but the the bad guy stuff was kinda really took the cake in this one. Yeah.
It’s funny because I agree with you. The odd throuple was my favorite with, Lyria, Volga, and Viktra. We have Peerless Scarred Gold. We got an Obsidian potential queen and a Red Gamma who somehow find themselves all together. It’s it’s a little pulp fiction.
They find themselves in the basement and they got the gimp coming at them. And even though they’re adversaries, they all get together for this one moment to fight the Red Hand. They found a common enemy. And it all really stems around Lyria for sure. But Volta and Viktor are also just some badass stuff.
I mean, Viktor Viktor is, like, an absolute animal when Lyria finally gets her going. But Lyria’s plan was cool. It was it was almost a story within a story, that whole red hand, Lyria situation in the mines. Her getting all those wives or girls that are gonna be wives on her side and planting these teeth in them. It was very creative and just cool.
It was a really cool Yeah. And her stuff. Like punching the shit out of the one girl that thinks she thought I was gonna be a rat. I was like, alright, Larry. Alright.
Yeah. Now you got me. Now I’m on like, that’s why I was she’s my favorite character. That’s That girl’s gonna be a rat. So cool.
I’m not gonna kill her, but I’m gonna break her jaw so she can’t speak. Yeah. She went zero to a 100 real, real quick this morning. I love it. Shattered jaws happening in here.
Yeah. We’ve seen Mission Impossible two. Yeah. So I mean Good one. Good call.
I know they can heal stuff like the medicis or whatever can heal pretty much anything. And with carving Yeah. Everyone can be fixed. You know? Ephraim loses a leg and he’s got a new leg.
No big deal, which is a real necessary part of what Pierce Brown created in this universe because otherwise, people would be dying of infections and gangrene and no one would speak again because of broken jaws all all the time. So it was smart to include that kinda that kinda stuff. We have a bunch of new characters. I don’t even know if you had a favorite one or if it was one from the old ones. Or is it just Lyria because she stepped up so much for this one?
I think that was the biggest one. Let me what about you? Yeah. Well, you know, you got Alexander. You got Atlas.
You got, Ajax. Obviously, Lilith, the clone. You know, there’s a bunch of mostly the bad guys really are the are the new people. There aren’t a ton of, new good guys. So, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I didn’t necessarily have I like Volga. I once again, I like Ephraim. I think because of Ephraim’s storyline and the way it ended, there’s some closure there. So I can say, okay.
Yeah. I I really liked how Ephraim changed. But, yeah, no. I think PAX is really growing up. The next book might be setting up for, like, a PAX jackal situation the way his dad had with the jackal, but now it’s PAX because now they’re both kids.
It’s gonna be a battle of 12 year olds, so should be interesting. But not necessarily, like, a favorite. There’s just so much jumping around, and maybe it’s a love for me, but I did love how even though there’s so much going on, the way Pierce Brown broke it up where it wasn’t like one chapter of one character and then we jump to another character and then we have to, you know, jump back to the first one and we don’t know how we got there, he did, like, segments, like, four chapter segments. So it’d be sticking with one character for four chapters. Okay.
We got a bunch of stuff going on and then there was a, you know, a clean break, and then did another character, and then we came back to them. So I like I like how we did that. But because of that, it didn’t necessarily create, you know, one character that became something that I could really focus on. But because I said love, let’s just jump into love hate. What what did you love about Dark Age?
The biggest thing is you could never ever predict what’s gonna happen next in this book. Most most of these type of books, you’re like, alright. Well, it’s gonna follow these beats and then eventually it’s gonna end up here. There’s something like, it could end in the bad guys could win. I have no I have no idea.
Yeah. You know? And as much as I love, like, a Mitch wrap series, they introduce the bad guy and I can usually be like, well, he’s greedy and he’s this and this. So he’s his own greed is gonna be his downfall. You know, like that’s what’s gonna happen.
You know, like, you can kinda see the weaknesses in their character and be like, this is probably what’s gonna cost them. And this is the one you could just get a bull to the head like Alexander for no nothing. You know? Yeah. There’s no They build Alexander’s character up.
Oh, okay. Great. He’s Lorna Arkos’ grandson. Okay. Cool.
He’s gonna be a big character and at least have, a sword fight or a razor battle with Lysander who’s also studied the Willow Way or whatever the thing is. Or that’s just a stance. The Willow Way is from, Shogun. But that’s about sex. But you think he’s gonna have, you know, some sort of fight, and it just turns into no.
He’s just shot in the head dead. Boom. See you later. Yeah. I mean that’s that’s really the the biggest thing and then you already mentioned I I just love the the ruggedness of it.
The zero to a 100 a lot of the the scenes. I just think that makes it it makes it cringe at the time but it makes it very memorable. That’s for sure. I I remember the the first book when the jackal cut his arm off. Mhmm.
That was when I was like, holy shit. This is a different type book, you know. Like, it’s so rugged to think about and he’s only been like, well, I gotta up it now. Like, I think I keep upping it. You don’t think he could but the next thing you know there’s a baby that’s getting his head smashed in and it’s nailed to a tree and you’re like, how so what is the next book gonna entail?
I I don’t even understand. So, yeah, definitely the brutality and ruggedness for sure. I like the tech in this one. I love the tech was pretty cool. The storm gods were a fun little feature that they it was, like, ancient technology that they dug out of the ice and used in on Mercury.
That was fun. The Drakenjagers, which are it’s basically the iron giant, I guess, that people control. Like, Rona is now I don’t know. Whatever they a pilot for it or whatever the case is, but you have to have all the you have to get hooked into it almost like in the matrix once again with all the Mhmm. The ports on your body and stuff.
And they have hundreds of them, and I wanted to say they said they were, like, a 100 feet tall or something crazy, like, 40 feet tall. I don’t know. Seems wild to me, but they were super cool. Psycho spikes, you know, whatever the chair is that Mustang has like from Octavia Loon, that thing seemed pretty wild. Whatever they did to, who was the guy that was in the syndicate that they interrogated, and she knew what he was gonna say because she basically, like, erased his memory.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was a pretty cool scene with her where she was showing some some of her interrogation tactics there. And then obviously, whatever Lyria is becoming with that parasite in her, she is now Figment. It seems like Figment is this parasite.
So, she is now Figment. So, what is that gonna give her? She has a little superhero story arc thing going on, so I can I can dig that? I thought the new tech that he added was fun was fun for this one. Yeah.
What about hate? Same as last one with the names. I realized what the issue was and I actually for book three, I’ve kind of started to figure all of them out. So it’s gonna be easier for whatever reason. Maybe it’s just repetitiveness or thirty hours of listening has finally helped me.
But the Atlas, Atlantia, Apollonus, Au, everything Yeah. Those are all what that fucks me up. And they call people by different names, but things. So, like, what’s Cassius’ like Alun or something? Uh-huh.
Or Yeah. So like that’s so I’ll I’ll get a name down in that, like, so there’s just too many of those things. Alright. Yeah. Give me some no non a names or give me like a just like a there’s a Joey crack over there.
He’s he’s, you know. Yeah. They’re like, oh, it’s a bolono. An Alexander, the other in there. I’m like, can we get another a non a name?
Is that all that kind of bolono? Or yeah. I come from the Juli’s. It’s like, wait. Who who what?
What? The only one I know is Barca because it’s Sevro, Al Barca. It’s like, okay. Barca. Got it.
Sevro. So I’m starting to figure out the other ones. But, yeah, you are right. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of a names. Everyone has an a in their name, at least.
Looking up the summaries, I was like, who’s Orian? Who the fuck is this person? That’s overnished. Yeah. Nice.
That’s why you don’t Whoops. That’s why you listen to audiobooks. Yeah. I agree with you. It’s the only other thing that I really hated.
Well, there’s two. But one is that there’s a lot of characters, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But based on the Red Rising Wiki, there are 92 characters in this book, and they’re all in different places but all Yeah. Intertwined. And so I was just so confused.
At the end, Darrow’s talking to Harnassus as he has a fucking razor through his chest, and he’s having a chat, a stop and chat with Harnassus. And I’m like, Who the hell is Harnassus? And I had to look up that, Oh, right. At the beginning of the book, he’s the guy who they put on Mercury to lead or, you know, he’s their governor or whatever of Mercury that he was chatting with at the beginning. But I was like, between he was the first character that you introduced in this book, and we’ve had 90 since then.
I don’t remember this guy. Yeah. Yeah. And all the Obsidian names, I was that was really tough for me was that Ephraim storyline and Pax and Elektra with everything that was happening with the different Obsidians because he had one guy’s like a shaman, and then the other guy is, like, Sephi’s boy toy. Was he a blue or something?
And I don’t know. Yeah. It was I was very confused with the Obsidians, unfortunately, because I feel like I didn’t get enough out of that story because I wasn’t exactly sure who was doing what. Like, oh, they killed Cepheys Griffin. It’s Thegalopolis.
I’m like, wait. Who’s the who’s the what’s that guy? Oh, that’s her husband. Yeah. Yeah.
Why? Oh, then then they’re like, it won’t Okay. Not just me. That was Turns out it wasn’t him that did it. It was this other guy.
I’m like, wait. Who is that guy? So, yeah, that was tough. And then my only other hate, and this one is, like, an actual hate, and I was kinda pissed off when I got here, but a clone trope, really? Yeah.
Yeah. I was gonna bring it up too. Come on. Oh, the jackal’s back. No.
Come on. No. Absolutely not. We had the jackal. The jackal is gone.
Let’s move on. You’re killing so many people. Now you just open the whole clone idea. It’s like, well, just clone Darrow. Now Darrow’s clone.
Like, Avatar. Have you seen the new one? No. Well, I started No. I watch every movie I see.
I watch it till it’s completed no matter how bad it is. Still have not finished that movie, and I loved Avatar. Yeah. It was it was fine. It’s kinda like, watching Happy Gilmore two.
If you go in being like, this is gonna be the best movie all of all time, you’re not you’re gonna be very disappointed. It’s it’s kinda what you expect. But Happy Gilmore two, they’re not spending $2,000,000,000 to make the movie and that this is gonna be super sweet, and then it’s just a story about this little boy clone or whatever the thing is. I I don’t care. It is a clone.
Yeah. It’s a bad guy clone in that one too. So, anyways but, I agree with you. It is there’s, like, zero tropes to to add this in as, like, a well, I mean, it’s a kind of a cop out, and you have so many good bad guy characters that you don’t really need him anymore. Yeah.
It’s like Lilith couldn’t be behind it. Who is it? Oh, it’s a I mean, at least he did it in a cool enough way where it is a clone, but it’s not him. You know, usually, when it’s a clone, it’s like this is the exact same person. He just introduced the same character.
Yeah. So it is and it isn’t him. So there I feel like there’s gonna be some interesting stuff there, but at the same time, we’re done with the Jackal. Move on. Let’s there’s all other bad guys to choose from.
Just move on. Yeah. No. I agree. That that and the like, we just didn’t really get enough Sevro in this book.
Like, that does too big. I first wrote it down. But, yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking before. No Sevro. And when we do see Sevro for that one interrogation scene, it’s awesome.
And it’s like, oh, this this really sucks because she’s so good, and we get and we get almost none. Yeah. When the lights turned off, I was like, Sevro is here. Let’s go. And I was like, no.
It’s not here. He’s still back. He’s still captured. I was like, oh. Yeah.
Lights turned off. I was like, is that Sevres music? He was like, no. Yeah. It’s it’s like in the WWE when they start the music, but then they change it to someone else’s.
We got Vince McMahon. Alright. Well, that was Dark Age, a thirty hour book. I think we did it in an hour, so not bad for us. Who is the book for, and how many buddies are you giving it out of five?
Yeah. I mean, I think we already know who it’s for. It’s for Red Rising fans. I think this can be suggested to epic fantasy followers again like we talked about last one. So I think the first series, anyone could do this.
This is a you gotta be kinda strapped in. You gotta be you gotta be a little bit more, ready for the fantasy and the the, the gore element that you’re gonna face here. I give it a 4.25. I think it was better than the last one. I still think it’s not as good as the first trilogy still.
It’s thirty hours. I was happy every time I got in my car I could listen to it. There’s been plenty, plenty of books that that’s not been the case. This is, over four all day for me. What about you?
Yeah. I like how you said that where you could read the first trilogy and not be necessarily, like, super in not necessarily, like, into it, but you don’t have to be as invested in that trilogy, I feel like, as you would to read this one because it’s so much more intense. You have to pay attention more. You really have to be invested in the characters to be able to get through it. And I don’t mean get through it like it’s tough read because I agree every time I picked it up I really enjoyed it.
And it took me a while, but I was listening to it in like five hour stretches. Like, once I picked it up, I just couldn’t stop. I give four. It’s a four buddies out of five. I think the other ones are the first trilogy is still better to me.
And, really, the only it’s amazing. Just the only downside is that I couldn’t necessarily follow with the characters. But it’s so creative. Like, any Brandon Sanderson fan, I feel like could enjoy this even though they might initially feel like it’s not nearly on the same scope. But once you get to this series, it’s like, oh, this is Brandon Sanderson’s scope.
So yeah. Yeah. For sure. Alright. Well, what do we got coming up next?
Book six. We’re gonna finish this thing out. Book six is Lightbringer. So I think this is the end of the trilogy. There might be a seventh.
I’m not positive. I gotta look that up. Yeah. I well the seventh is out. I I think that he might be writing a seventh though.
But yeah, so we’ll jump into that and then probably try to find some shorter, summer reads after that to, to cool down with. Yeah. So Yeah. I’m I’m very much enjoying it but these are, these are long books and I like how we’re mixing up some long ones and then we’ll we’ll slide back With our Harry Potter thing, at least we had some movies to cut in between, and this one’s just like, well Yeah. Yeah.
You know? We don’t we don’t like to have this long of a hiatus, but we we gotta we gotta, you know, sometimes you gotta read the long ones. It is what it is. Alright, Keith. Well, that was Dark Age.
Thanks for chatting it out and for providing that summary at the top because that was helpful to rack my brain. I haven’t started Lightbringer, so I’ll start it now. It was, it was fun chatting with you, and I’ll talk to you, for Lightbringer. Indeed. Alright.
Alright. Bye now. Bye now.
