Morning Star by Pierce Brown

You probably know this, but Morning Star is the third book in the Red Rising Trilogy.  I read the first two in March, then put a hold on Morning Star at my library.  It came in on Saturday.  I finished up today, jumping Morning Star ahead of the pile of to be reads on my shelf.  Morning Star skipped the line for two reasons.  One is that there is a hold list and, therefore, someone else is anxiously awaiting their turn to read it, so I wanted to turn around quickly.  The other is that I just wanted to.

I found the Red Rising Trilogy to be engrossing.  It's like the young adult books of one person rising up from the downtrodden, hallmarked by The Hunger Games (one of my favorites) and similar books such as The Testing (well worth checking out), but is wholly its own thing.  It's an adult read due to grit (yes, it's much grittier than The Hunger Games), scope, and complexity.  I'd be lying if I said there weren't times I got a little lost and either went back to check what happened earlier or read on.  I wasn't unhappy about this, though.  I felt it made for a really interesting read where not every little thing was explained.  It required some thinking on the part of the reader.  Also, there are no easy answers.  I appreciated the nod to the fact that just because a population is downtrodden, that doesn't mean they are all automatically noble.  These were things I loved about this series.  And, clearly, given how it jumped to top of my to be read pile, I did love it.

There were some things that were tough, though.  There is a vast amount of violence and death, including people the reader will care about.  I've seen reviewers say things like, "Pierce Brown, what are you thinking?  You can only kill off so many people and still have us care."  I felt that a bit.  In many ways, though, these are the realities of war.  And, in that respect, it may be that there should have been even more deaths.  That would have been really hard, though, so I'm glad it didn't happen.  Still, though, the violence was rough at times.  It's not really a read for the sensitive.

In the end, I thought this was an excellent trilogy that just kept going with the strength of the first book, unlike many series which I often find weakens as they progress or, at least, have a book or two that isn't as good as the others.  All three are good reads here.  I will admit, though, that I'm looking for a light easy read next.