Golden Son by Pierce Brown
By Ella Law
Published May 16, 2025
Explore the world of Golden Son in The Gallery.
🔴 CSR-4: Explicit & Dark Themes – Adult Readers Only
Read more about The Obsidian Library’s Content Rating Scale here.
⚠️ CW: 🩸 Graphic Violence, ⚰️ Death & Grief, 💔 Betrayal, 🧠 Psychological Manipulation, 🚨 Suicide, 🔪 Torture, 🔥 War Crimes
✔️ This sequel contains brutal warfare, disturbing betrayals, intense psychological pressure, and moral reckoning. While marketed with YA elements, the thematic and emotional weight aligns firmly with adult audiences.
📖 Introduction & Why This Book Matters
If Red Rising was about survival, Golden Son is about ascension—and the cost of it. Pierce Brown doesn't let Darrow climb the ladder of Gold society without consequence. Instead, he explores how revolution doesn't just topple institutions—it tests your soul. This book matters because it shifts from personal vengeance to societal warfare, asking not just whether systems can be overthrown, but whether doing so makes you the very thing you sought to destroy.
💡 Key Takeaways & Insights
Trust hurts most when it's earned. Roque's betrayal wasn't born of hatred—it came from heartbreak. Their relationship reveals how Darrow's secrets poisoned even his most precious connections. Both failed each other by choosing pride over vulnerability, and the consequences will be bloody. How you treat people matters as much as your strategy or power.
Victory without loss is a lie. Brown refuses to let triumph come without cost. The assault on Mars succeeds, but many Howlers die, Ragnar's faith in Darrow is tested, and Are's alias is burned. These losses advance the plot and linger in the characters' psyches, reminding us that revolution demands sacrifice.
Loyalty takes many forms. From Ragnar's quiet, powerful defense after Darrow's reveal to Mustang, to Victra's unwavering support amid shifting allegiances, the book explores how loyalty manifests differently across characters. Some express it through silence, others through action, creating a complex web of relationships.
Power without trust is tyranny. Darrow realizes this when those closest to him turn against him. When Harmony asks him to become a suicide bomber, Darrow refuses, understanding that anyone asking you to forsake your judgment isn't worthy of your loyalty.
Empires fear collapse from within. The Golds don't fear a Red uprising—they fear civil war. Darrow weaponizes this by igniting strife between Houses Augustus and Bellona, leveraging their egos against the Sovereign's manipulations.
Even the silenced rise. Ragnar's transformation from brutalized enforcer to a man of purpose represents one of the book's most powerful arcs. Through Darrow's vulnerability, he reclaims his humanity and becomes more than a weapon—he becomes hope.
Darrow isn't just a rebel—he's a wounded child leading an army. Beneath the strategy and violence, we see a boy cracking under pressure, questioning everything. His moments of doubt—wishing he could hand leadership to another—don't signal weakness, but rather reveal the human ache of responsibility in a world built to break idealists.
Media is memory. In a society built on erasure, Darrow uses truth as the ultimate weapon, capturing the Sovereign's betrayal via secret recording to expose her lies.
🤯 The Most Unexpected or Interesting Parts
The Ares Reveal: Finding out that Fitchner—the rogue, vulgar mentor—was Ares all along recontextualizes everything. His rebellion wasn't born of ideology, but grief. His Red wife Bryn was murdered at 22 for loving him, a Gold. His son, Sevro, born of that forbidden love, becomes the unlikely embodiment of everything the rebellion hopes to achieve: a union of strength and empathy. This also explains why other characters tease Sevro for being smaller than the average Gold and why he so often leans into the joke himself with self-deprecating humor. Brown doesn't just twist the plot—he cracks it open to show the raw heart beating inside.
The Betrayal's Brutal Poetry: The book's ending unleashes a cascade of betrayal that's breathtaking in its calculated cruelty. Roque, who once loved Darrow deeply, poisons him. The Jackal executes his own father with cold precision. Antonia shoots Victra in the back. And most devastating—Fitchner's head delivered in a box. Brown elevates betrayal from plot device to art form, leaving Darrow paralyzed physically and emotionally as everything he built collapses.
Redemption's Possibility: When Tactus kneels and asks forgiveness before his death, we glimpse a profound truth—even the cruel can change. This moment forces Darrow to confront his own capacity for mercy, wondering if he'd made a mistake not forgiving Tactus earlier. It plants the seed that perhaps Golds themselves aren't inherently monstrous—a revolutionary idea for someone seeking to overthrow them.
🏛️ How This Book Applies to Real Life
Power's Inevitable Corruption: When Darrow learns the Sovereign killed her father to prevent tyranny, only to become a tyrant herself, it raises uncomfortable questions. Does power inevitably corrupt? If someone will always hold power in any society, what would a true alternative look like? This cyclical nature of oppression makes us question whether revolutionaries can avoid becoming what they overthrow.
Media as Both Weapon and Shield: Darrow's strategic use of recording technology to expose the Sovereign's lies demonstrates how transparency can topple carefully constructed narratives. In our world of manufactured consent and information warfare, truth becomes both a weapon and a shield. Without Darrow's recording, history would be rewritten—just as countless real-world atrocities have been erased from official records.
The Currency of Trust: Golden Son reveals trust as the true currency of revolution. When Pliny stages his coup, Darrow is disgusted by the crew's quick betrayal. "Trust is what's important," he realizes. Trust in your friends. Without it, you have nothing. In an era of deepening social division, this reminder that relationships underpin all meaningful change feels especially poignant.
The Cost of Compartmentalization: Darrow's double life—keeping secrets from those closest to him—ultimately undermines his mission. When Mustang discovers his lies, the damage isn't just strategic but deeply personal. This resonates with how compartmentalization in our lives often damages the relationships we need most. Living authentically, even when uncomfortable, builds more durable connections than comfortable lies.
Family as Revolutionary Foundation: Fitchner's revelation that "the rebellion had to come from love, from family, from RED" mirrors how real social movements endure through community bonds, not just ideology. Darrow's references to Red culture being of "song and dance and family" aren't incidental—they're the emotional bedrock that makes their resistance possible. This echoes how marginalized communities throughout history have preserved identity and hope through cultural connection.
Who should read Golden Son?
Readers who loved Red Rising but want deeper political intrigue and higher emotional stakes
Anyone interested in how power structures sustain themselves through manipulation of truth
Readers who appreciate moral ambiguity—where even villains reveal moments of humanity
📚 Final Rating: Front & Center Shelf Worthy
🎯 Should you read it? Absolutely—but brace yourself. This book will break your heart, twist your moral compass, and leave you stunned. You'll root for Darrow even when he loses sight of himself.
🔥 Final Thought: Golden Son is war disguised as politics, and politics disguised as love. It's a book about trust, redemption, and the slow corrosion of idealism. When Darrow asks Mustang, "You told me to let you in, how far do you want to go?"—he's really asking us all: how much truth can we bear to see? When the last page falls, with Darrow imprisoned and betrayed by those he trusted most, you'll be devastated—and begging for book three.
