I haven’t posted about a book in five months.  You might conclude from that fact that I haven’t read a book in five months, but of course that would be a silly turns of events.  Since knocking out “My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry,” I returned to the Red Rising series, first re-reading the original trilogy and then the newest book, “Iron Gold.”

I had assumed after the first three books that author Pierce Brown was done with this series.  I watched and read several interviews, and while he teased that he had stuff in the works, it didn’t seem like more Red Rising was it.  But then came the announcement of a new trilogy picking up in the aftermath of the first, and I could not have been more excited.

Part of what I love about these books is that they are very escapist.  Basically the first three involve tearing down an unfair system that puts people in castes and discriminates against the so-called low colors.  Book four is the start of the question: Well, then what?  It all happens in space, with centers of action on Mars. Earth’s moon, Venus and the moons of Jupiter.  Yes, there’s a fair amount of politics involved, but not so much that it brought me back to Earth and its issues.

I enjoyed that the two biggest heroes of the original series, Darrow and Mustang, are not infallible gods in this new environment.  It would have been tempting to write them as so, leaving the others in the universe fawning over their every move for what they had accomplished.  But it makes the story so much richer for them to be questioned, and to question the others who want to be the leaders.

Most of all though, Brown does a wonderful thing to reboot the story by breaking away from Darrow as the sole narrator.  For three books we saw the story only through his eyes, and while that was effective before, it was definitely time to see some new perspectives.  What we get is the story told by Lyria, a young freed slave from Darrow’s lowest red color, Ephraim, a former soldier turned super thief, Lysander, the son of the deposed monarch, and then still some of Darrow himself.

The structure reveals not only the varied views of the different classes in the emerging new order, but also the fun that exists in a detective story when you start to see disparate threads racing toward each other and know the fun part is just beginning.

I’m very much looking forward to the next book in January.