Big downgrade from Iron Gold, for me at least.

The first three books are ambitious and bombastic - lots of flavors from Battle Royale, Hunger Games, Ender's Game, Warhammer, the Expanse, Metabarons, Shakespeare, Brave New World and real life history. It's both science fiction AND fantasy. It has an overwhelming number of characters to keep up with and the scale is massive.

As a result, I think Dark Age suffers terribly from Brown biting off more than he could chew.

The best chapters are the ones where he hones in on a select few - Victra, Volga and Lyria's portion in particular were terrific, as was the attack on the Senate and pockets of other conflicts (Volsung Fa) really had me going.

But the book is such a slog. It opens with a battle the lasts 150 pages and I had such a hard time visualizing things because this world has everything - swordwhips, lasers, shields, armor, sniper rifles, grenades and every kind of science fiction vehicle you can think of on ground, air and space. Seemingly everything is turbo-torqued to the point where describing ripWings or pulseCannons or AirChargedSuperWeapon or whatever becomes almost meaningless. The interpersonal connections can be fascinating, but there are so many of them and you've got four planets and the moon that all have their own history, culture, war status and population that when they'd go from one planet to another, I literally forgot they were on that planet to begin with. Ephraim, one of the best additions in Iron Gold, is almost wasted here. His sections in the middle of the book with the Obsidians were a complete bore.

It's just so difficult to get a sense of it all.

I think this would be a terrific animated series and that's the only way you could do it. As a novel it is messy and overwritten, yet terrific in parts. My least favorite in the series, but you also couldn't pay me to stop reading the series now. ( )

Continuation of the Red Rising space opera saga.
So much war, so much death, so much one-upmanship, so much scheming. So good!

I love the all the new compatriot groups which formed in this one.
Can't wait for the next installment, Light Bringer, so see how this continues to pan out. ( )

Minus one star for another unnecessary cliffhanger ending ( )

Really loved the previous books in the series, but this one started soooo slow (a real slog) and it had been a while since the last one some there was so much confusion about the characters (and who was who, and who had done what to whom) that I had to put it down. I might try again another time - sad because I was quite invested in the characters and story arc. ( )

Pros: Depth of character development, beautiful prose, new phrases like "Meat carpet."
Cons: Okay, dude, we get it. All hope is lost, everything sucks and everyone's gonna die.

I'd read it again though. ( )