Light Bringer (Red Rising Saga Book 6) by Pierce Brown
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Darrow returns as Pierce Brown’s New York Times bestselling Red Rising series continues in the thrilling sequel to Dark Age.
The Reaper is a legend, more myth than man: the savior of worlds, the leader of the Rising, the breaker of chains.
But the Reaper is also Darrow, born of the red soil of Mars: a husband, a father, a friend.
Marooned far from home after a devastating defeat on the battlefields of Mercury, Darrow longs to return to his wife and sovereign, Virginia, to defend Mars from its bloodthirsty would-be conqueror Lysander.
Lysander longs to destroy the Rising and restore the supremacy of Gold, and will raze the worlds to realize his ambitions.
The worlds once needed the Reaper. But now they need Darrow, and Darrow needs the people he loves-Virginia, Cassius, Sevro-in order to defend the Republic.
So begins Darrow’s long voyage home, an interplanetary adventure where old friends will reunite, new alliances will be forged, and rivals will clash on the battlefield.
Because Eo’s dream is still alive-and after the dark age will come a new age: of light, of victory, of hope.
These are my initial thoughts and I will be doing a more full length review soon (with spoilers). Pierce's 4 years of writing has paid off. I can't even find the words to describe my feelings right now except that I loved it.
I listened to the audiobook in a week at 1.25x speed and I am now reading the words more methodically. I never do that: finish a book and start it all over again right away. But that is how much I love this saga.
Every POV in the audiobook was narrated by Tim Gerard Reynolds. I know I am in a minority here because almost every fan complained about the other POV narrators so much that they got rid of them and had TGR do it all for Light Bringer, but I preferred the multi-narrator format. Especially Lyria's voice from Dark Age. The only thing that annoyed me about Lysander and Virginia's narration in Dark Age was that they both pronounced "Cassius" incorrectly (it's Cass-ee-us, not Cash-us). And don't get me wrong, I love TGR's voice, but he's Darrow's voice and it took some getting used to him as the voice of Lysander, Virginia and Lyria.
One of the many things that I love about this book are the themes of forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption. The tone and mood is also reminiscent of Morning Star. (Which I’m re-listening to right now and I see many parallels.).
There is so much more I can say, but can’t without going into detail and this is spoiler free. I'll be back with more when I can organize my thoughts and feelings. There's a lot to process and I think I'll break it up by character.
So keep reading and endure my fellow Howlers.
5 out of 5 Voyages on the Archimedes