I found Golden Son to be even more of a page-turner than Red Rising. The setting of the book changes pretty significantly and the cast of characters around the protagonist mostly shifts as well, but I was kept interested by how the author continues to build out the world of the series.

What brings my review down a star is how Brown moves from relying on themes and ideas from other sci-fi series to borrowing some pretty major plot points. The way that this second book leans more in its influences than the first has made me less excited to continue the series from here — I started book three, but I put it down a quarter of the way through, and I’m not feeling much motivation to pick it back up.