Does 'Golden Son' Have A Cliffhanger Ending?

'Golden Son' ends with an amazing cliffhanger, exactly the kind of thing you’d throw the book against (gently, because it’s a book) and then immediately start reading the next one. All of Darrow’s plans go utterly wrong. All of his relationships go wrong. Darrow’s sense of self is completely destroyed in the final pages. And then in the very last pages there’s a huge twist that utterly flips power around, leaving Darrow in a seemingly insurmountable circumstance. I admire the cliffhanger in that the physical danger to Darrow is not the only thing that will frighten the reader, but also the emotional danger – the reevaluation of nearly every alliance and conversation in the book, left ambiguous in terms of loyalty for several major characters. It’s the kind of ending that demands immediately the next book.

Just finished reading ‘Golden Son’ by Pierce Brown last night. Blimey. That was one heck of a read. The ending is not a cliffhanger, no, it’s more of an avalanche of unanswered questions that have left me reeling for far too long. Darrow’s world has been turned upside down and it’s far from reassuring in the least. Yes, there are plenty of ‘betrayals’ along the way, some of which were fairly predictable given the closed-off nature of the majority of the_book’s_ cast. But there are others that came completely out of left-field, so it was lovely to be so entirely surprised. As it stands now, it’s seemingly been left to Darrow to clear up the Society’s power-structure once and for all, in a far from straightforward or non-violent manner, no doubt. It’s difficult to gaugunto how he’s going to be able to achieve what’s needed to bring down the mighty ‘Society’. Mustang’s decision to ‘leave’ and his goodbye, for one, will have to wait for now. Sevro, I guess, remains to be seen re: his loyalty. And as for Cassius . . . God help us all as that needs explaining in full. It was an epic ‘ending’ and I really, really can’t wait to find out what Pierce Brown has planned for us next, in terms of continuing the story of the characters that we care so deeply about and have grown to love in equal measure.

The point of the cliffhanger here is to mirror Darrow’s confusion and horror. We’re reading his shock and horror as we read the end of Golden Son. It’s not just a series of events that are left unresolved at the end of the book. The physical dangers that Darrow faces are reified for us as readers in these last pages, and the moral confusion of certain major characters reaches a kind of breaking point. What Brown is showing us is not just a series of external events, but the inner transformations of the characters and how those changes will affect the rest of the series. And how they change our perception of the overall conflict of the series.

This cliffhanger is amazing because it’s a huge plot twist and a deeply personal moment for Darrow. Instead of focusing solely on the rebellion, this moment explores Darrow’s character in a truly profound way. His entire identity, his relationships with other people, his purpose – everything about Darrow is called into question in this final scene. So rather than being left wondering what happens next with the rebellion, you’re left wondering what will happen to Darrow as a person. Will he crack under the pressure? Will he become the monstrous version of himself that people believe him to be? The real cliffhanger here is Darrow’s descent into psychosis, and it’s far more compelling than any number of space battles.