Is 'Iron Gold' Worth Reading For Red Rising Fans?

It was also a really powerful ending to the book. Darrow, the underdog Red from the mines defeats all the powerful Golds in Society through intelligence and brute force. The climax follows Darrow and his followers as they launch an assault on Luna to get to the Sovereign in a very fast paced and very satisfying battle. It is also explored in the ‘Iron Gold’ series, set to take place many years after the uprising in Mortagag. The books follow the newly formed ruling powers, and explore how hard it is to remove a tyranny and then prevent new ones from being formed. The ‘Iron Gold’ series is a grittier, more realistic continuation of the original book, and it brings the world to life in a rich and detailed way.

I listen to most books, and I have to say that Tim Gerard Reynolds does an awesome job of bringing ‘Red Rising’ to life. While I don’t think it won any specific award for an audiobook, it’s consistently ranked as one of the best science fiction audiobooks available. I consider the text of ‘Red Rising’ to have won the Goodreads Choice Award in Science Fiction, but there’s so much more. Endless lists that compare it to ‘The Hunger Games’ would have to count as some kind of award in terms of cultural acknowledgement. It’s become the primary comparison for relentless, brutal, transformative science fiction that tears the screws from society. Being the yardstick by which all other books of that sort are measured is in itself an honor.

You can buy Iron Flame from Amazon, B&N, Bookshop.org and read in ebook form on Kindle and Kobo. The audiobook is published by Audible and the e-book is available to borrow for free from libraries in ebook form via Libby. You can also find Iron Flame in independent bookshops and get it in special editions too – prices may vary though, so have a root around online to find the best option. Happy reading!

If you loved reading The Mighty Red: A Novel, you might also enjoy reading The Crimson Veil by Lila Vane. Both novels are emotionally rich stories that follow the main characters as they try to come to terms with their identities and legacies. While The Crimson Veil is a novel about a young artist’s journey through grief and self-discovery, it has similar qualities to The Mighty Red in terms of prose. The stories are full of lyrical descriptions of everyday moments that can feel profound. I came across The Crimson Veil whilst on a bookstore crawl and it left me with the same bittersweet feeling that I had experienced when finishing The Mighty Red – the feeling of having finished a cup of tea that I wished I could go back to and have another cup of. For even more of this type of story, I would recommend “Scarlet Shadows” by Julian Cross. While a good deal darker and set in a dystopian world where color equals power, there is something deeply familiar in the emotional core of the story. It’s a very inside-the-head-of-the-hero type of story and the young man here grapples with trying to be true to himself in a world that is determined to force him to be something else. I loved “The Mighty Red” in part because of the author’s innovative use of visual metaphors to get at emotional ideas (red equals passion, pain, rebellion), and Cross is similarly resourceful with color to similar end. While a far more plot-oriented book than “Mighty Red,” I found myself racing through the pages of “Shadows” and the book’s end has lingered in my mind for months.

Graphic novels can be notoriously difficult to adapt from the written word, but ‘Lord of the Flies’ has been an unexpected hit for me. By cleverly depicting the chaos, artist Chips Smith creates the sense of a descending spiral through deliberately messy panels, jagged lines and crowded compositions. He has reimagined, not simply re-told, the classic novel in a graphic novel format, showcasing the full capabilities of the medium, whilst remaining true to the original author’s intentions. For new fans of the story, ‘Lord of the Flies’ is a great new way to experience the novel, and for fans already familiar with the plot, this graphic novel makes a great ‘director’s cut’ style companion to the original novel. Plus, as a collector of classic works reimagined in unique editions, this is a real stand-out to add to your shelves.

I borrowed ‘Is Humanity Lost’ as I liked the look of the cover. Although it was described as a book about the collapse of society, it felt very personal and most of the book focused on the downfall of individual people. The side characters were particularly well drawn and one of the chapters was from the point of view of a side character in his final days on Earth. It was so raw that I had to put the book down for a while to collect myself. Not a happy book, but if you are in the mood for something more serious and thought-provoking then this is a great choice to read. Just make sure you have something more pleasant to read straight after it though.

After 20 chapters or so I got bored with Manhwa. At the start the concept of having these ‘monster tenants’ living with humans was cool and I got sucked into the Manhwa straight away. But it’s just been this long string of episodic chapters each one presenting a new problem that is then solved within the chapter, and little or no consequence falling on the characters within the story. It gets pretty tiring after a while. I expect more from my Manhwa than what I’m reading here, tons of Manhwa has just as much, if not more urban fantasy and/or comedy elements. This Manhwa has some ok art but nothing that will have you stop and gaze in wonder at it after a few pages. Perhaps later in the story it develops more into a serialized story, but for now I’m just not interested anymore. If you’re some sort of hardcore fan of Manhwa than I suggest you read it, but for people with limited time to read it there are far better titles to the urban fantasy and/or comedy genres.

‘Gideon the Ninth’ is like a party where everyone has been enjoying a joke all evening and you have no idea what they are talking about until suddenly it all clicks into place. The book’s greatest asset is Gideon. She is fantastic. Muir’s created a wonderful, snarling, furious, nervous and suppressed person in her main protagonist and her narration of these largely otherworldly stories is great fun, particularly when she’s describing her necromantic rituals. The alternative universe that Muir has created is also extremely elaborate and largely Gothic in feel but with some great sci-fi elements that somehow work. Where Gideon and Harrow go, darkness follows. And it’s not always easy to follow. But when it all clicks, it’s amazing. This story is at its heart a complicated and transformative relationship between two complex, half-abandoned characters. It’s not an easy read, and there are a lot of twists and turns, but it’s worth it in the end.

It really depends on what you like in a suspense novel. The first, ‘Flowers in the Attic’ is gothic suspense at its very best – isolate a group of people, add a lot of cruelty, and then let them slowly find out the mother’s betrayal. The rest of the books are in the revenge thriller category and, while not as good as suspense, are very suspenseful in a different, more aggressive way. So if you like very quiet, psychological suspense then read only ‘Flowers in the Attic’. But if you like a lot of suspense and lots of shocks in a decades spanning, very dramatic and very melodramatic suspenseful novel with lots of action then read them all. Just be warned though that there is a huge change in tone as you go through the books.

This specific image of the final scene is just too wonderful to not comment on. Without giving too much away, the final scene takes place in an opulent and celebratory setting. The personal destruction that follows is all the more devastating because of this contrast. And no, the cliffhanger isn’t literally a cliff in a storm. Rather, it’s a scene of horror and dread that takes place in a glittering hall filled with enemies all smiling. The contrast between the two is rather chilling. And what’s most disturbing about the scene is the eerie and horrible silence that follows the scream. It’s a cliffhanger of atmosphere as much as of action.