Book Review: Morning Star (The Red Rising Trilogy: Book 3)

Rating: 5/5 stars.

OH MY. OH MY WORD. What I have just read? It was absolutely, positively amazing. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more invested in a book than I was with this one. IT BLEW MY MIND. Oh, I loved it.

Darrow is drowning in darkness. He was betrayed by those he trusted; he was outmatched by those he thought that he could outmatch. He was forced to watch as many of his friends were killed around him. His world has fallen apart. And the rebellion to take down the Gold hierarchy may never rise. He has begun to give up. But there are others who haven’t given up. He is inspired by them to live for more. But his people and those who fight along beside him are bloodthirsty, as bloodthirsty as those their supposed to be fighting, those their supposed to better than. They aren’t just out for justice, but for blood. But he must teach them not to fight for blood, for that will bring about more hatred, more hearts broken, and more death and they’ll become just as bad as the people their fighting against. No, they must be better than that if they’re to have any chance of victory. They must live for more.

The characters are totally some of my favorite characters in the whole world. I connect with them so well. GAH! I love them so much. Darrow, oh Darrow. The beginning of this book was more painful than the ending of the last book. It was so terrible. But I loved the realness of it. He goes through so much sorrow and pain. It’s terrible in some ways, but it so beautiful to see how he grows and matures and learns. He becomes so much more of a leader. Sevro, my dear boy. I love him. He becomes the leader he’s just not made to be. He’s a boy put into a man’s shoes. He has to grow quickly. He makes mistakes. He’s ruthless. But he learns. He learns to be the type of leader that he needs to be. He finds joy in something just altogether amazing. It’s perfect. Cassius. Wow. Cassius took my emotions for a very rough ride. He has lost so much, like so much. Sometimes I think that I can trust him, that he’s going to change and make something better of himself. But then other times I think that there is no way that he’s trustworthy. He’s too cold and angry to change. He’s too far gone. What reason would he have to change? His part in this book really surprised me though, and I loved it. Roque has always been one of my favorite characters. But after this last book, whoa, I was still surprised to find out that I cared about him. He betrayed his friends, but I still cared for him. I wanted him to change his ways, but he seems so loyal to the rules and laws and code of the Golds. He’s the perfect Gold. He is so majestic, so civil, so merciful, and so firm. He plays such an amazing part in this book. I love it, though it is a bit sad too.

The writing, oh, the writing. It is so beautiful. So heart wrenching. S0 powerful. I don’t really know how to describe it. It just has this vibe that makes me think of justice, of war, and of blood. But other times it makes me think of love, of peace, and of hope. This writing awakes so many emotions in me. It’s amazing.

The world building was so so so spectacular. We got to see so much more of the world. It is amazing. At least most of this book was set in spaceships in space. It was glorious. It seems so simple and easy to understand, but when you really look it over and think you begin to understand just how complex this world. This author has really outdone himself. It is not overwhelming and hard to understand, but it is complex in a way that is somehow easy to comprehend. The spaceships. The different planets. The different places on the planets. The cities. The technology. It was all just perfect, while feeling so realistic. Like they didn’t have hyperspace or anything like that, or to travel to different planets it sometimes took weeks, maybe months. That is another thing I like about it. It’s timeline was realistic. Nothing is done in a short amount of time, like many other books you read. For example, I think this whole trilogy covers five to seven years. At the same time, it never felt choppy, and that, to me, is another amazing feat.

How I was tortured by the plot. I was tortured throughout this book. I think that I died at one point in this book, then was somehow resurrected. The plot was crazy and insane, but somehow plausible. Of course, it was so amazing. There were space battles. Wonderful, surprising space battles. There was treachery. So much intensity. So many mind twisting moments. There was sadness, but joy too. There were two moments the totally blew my mind, I was left gasping for air, shocked, and I read on with such a ferocity like I haven’t had in awhile.

The language was much more prevalent in this book, I feel like, than the previous ones. P***, s***, a**, b****, and b****** were used a good bit. Then there were these two pages that had a bunch of f words all together. There is a lot of violence and so I wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart. A man mentioned that he slept with another man, but he was a side character and so nothing was made of it. There are some coarse sexual jokes too.

Ahhh, I haven’t read such an amazing trilogy. It was so good. So, so, so good. I don’t think I’ll ever read anything like this again. It was amazing and glorious. It lived up to all the expectations and more. It was the perfect ending. While I loved it so much, I’m also sad that I finished something so beautiful and heartfelt. Read this, it is something exceptionally unique.

-G. Paige