Disclaimer: While reading the third entry in this series, it was brought to my attention that the author is potentially zionist. While I could not independently verify this claim, there is a noted silence about the atrocities taking place in Gaza. While many may claim that bookish spaces should remain apolitical, books are inherently political. Pierce Brown, specifically, is a dystopian author that writes about injustices in an unjust society. That one so well-versed in the topic should stay silent in the face of injustice speaks volumes. In light of this, I will be posting my written reviews of the first three entries in the series and will not finish the rest. I cannot tell readers that they must research every author that they come across, but I will encourage them to engage thoughtfully with any information they happen to come across.
Of the original trilogy, this one felt the weakest for me. Not because it’s poorly written. but because of the sharp pivot the story takes. There’s still plenty of battles, gut punches, and betrayals, but perhaps the biggest betrayal is to the reader. This may be the closest that I go to giving spoilers in one of my reviews. After the chaos of Golden Son, there’s a noticeable, and perhaps warranted shift in Darrow. He starts the series as the rebel ready to burn the entire society down, but in this entry, rather than topple the system he pivots to compromise, leaving us with an ending where reformation is somehow presented as the morally correct choice. For a saga built on tearing down the old order, that’s a frustrating note to land on.
Another thing that soured my experience was the change in how information is handled. Up until now, we’ve been aligned with Darrow, living and dying on what he knows. But in Morning Star, he lies to us, the readers. It’s not the clever unreliable narrator kind of lie, either. It’s just a withholding of information meant to manufacture tension. What happens in the scene fits the narrative thematically. It’s a full circle kind of moment that makes a lot of sense and could even be considered predictable, yet, because up to this moment we’ve known everything that Darrow knows, we’re lead to believe that the scene is playing out differently until a sudden twist is revealed. Instead of feeling shocked, I felt cheated.
There are still high points. The action is cinematic, and the emotional beats hit when they’re allowed to breathe. The found-family moments continue to shine, and Darrow’s journey has weight even when I disagreed with where it landed.
But overall, this finale left me conflicted. It closes the arc, but not in a way that feels true to the revolution it promised. For me, Morning Star reads less like the destruction of a system and more like a reshuffling of cards in a very bloody deck.
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