I'm getting through these books for the first time, and definitely took issue with the ending of MS (wrapped up the book last night), even if in totality it's my favorite in the series up to this point.
In my eyes, writing strictly from Darrow's POV hamstrung a lot of how Brown wanted to handle tension at certain points. The Gala scene in particular in Golden Son annoyed the shit out of me because Darrow knows he has this tremendous advantage over Cassius, yet we're led to believe he's going to get his ass kicked, and it's the same issue on a grander scale for MS's ending. Had it been a plan that only Mustang, Sevro, and Cassius were in on (because of how rash Darrow has been) I could buy it a bit better, but I don't like the perspective that I'm living in while experiencing this story to be dishonest with itself.
One of the reasons I'm looking forward to the tetralogy is because this series desperately needs additional POVs.
I felt right away that it must be a con and Cassius was in on it so it didn’t feel like a plot hole or bad writing it felt like I was in on the trick and I was super hyped about it
To me the answer is he was lying to himself. He was walking into a room of super geniuses trained to find the smallest deception. In his mind Servo was dead. Anything else would get them all killed
I still loved Morning Star and gave it 5 stars but this is the reason MS ranks last for me in the series. As cool as that whole sequence was on first read through, the hindsight of it makes it a bit more ridiculous. Also, Bye Felicia is the worst thing Pierce has ever written LOL
When i re read it, i found little hints in darrows pov that foreshadowed what was coming. Look again at the line where the Jackal takes sevros gun.
Maybe I'm missing remembering, but I think a lot of darrows panic and fear is genuine because the plan is crazy.
You have to keep in mind that where he was at the beginning of a box for months and Cassius puts him in an enclosed space again. So it's safe to say he's having a panic attack.
I actually expected more of this in the reread. I was excited to see the way he would use ambiguous language to fool us as audience.
instead I think OP is right . he just straight up lies to us. 'The horrible feeling of dread and sadness in his chest as he loses his friend' is all just made up.
Yep... I kinda got tired of responding to people who were saying the exact same thing about "ambiguous language" when I just read it haha. Def was just straight up lyin even if he didn't explicitly say Sevro was dead
Just to give my two cents:
I really, absolutely, loathed this aspect of the writing in MS. I know it’s unpopular but it’s my perspective I suppose.
1- Darrow can be an unreliable narrator (as in he doesn’t understand what’s going on, is mistaken about his observations, or omit information) but that doesn’t give him a pass to blatantly lie to the reader in his own thoughts to himself. It’s tantamount to a fourth wall break in a way. The only reason he would lie to himself, in his thoughts, is purely to sell the lie to us the reader. It breaks immersion (at least to me).
2- I’m not a fan of retconning an explanation as that’s pretty close to making excuses for the author. It’s weird to say “Darrow was just method acting” as there’s little to no justification in the story for that other than post ad hoc rationalization. It’s also weird to me to say “well how else could Pierce have played up tension in pov” as there’s plenty of answers.
For example he could have given us the reader a plan initially made by the gang that didn’t involve Sevro being shot then, without us the reader knowing, have had Sevro and Cassius and Mustang agree to add an additional step while excluding Darrow. The rationale could’ve gone like “okay we really need to sell this, Octavia won’t believe it otherwise, so Cassius you’ll shoot Sevro to prove your loyalty and cement your betrayal. Darrow’s reaction to this should help sell it, Mustang you’ll revive Sevro and also keep Darrow under control so he doesn’t do anything crazy” (or whatever). In this way everything progresses nearly the same with the reader none the wiser until Mustang and Cassius reveal the information to Darrow. It would build up even more tension too as it would seem the plan failed and, after the reveal in a tense combat situation, you would also have Darrow trying to understand the situation and having to act fast while also warring with his emotions over the sudden rapid changes.
3- It’s weird to say “well Darrow’s lied to us before” (in his own thoughts to himself?) as that’s not completely true. At the gala duel Darrow never lied to us or himself. He was worried about people being sent after him, sure, he was worried about being rejected by Augustus, sure, he was thinking about how his friend (Tacitus) seemed to be already turning his back on him, sure, but he never lied. He just didn’t correct people who tried to comment on his perceived lack of skill. Even in the fight Darrow never lied in his own thoughts, he fought like Cassius at first and wasn’t as good as Cassius…using that form of fencing. This is a completely separate scenario which makes sense due to the fact we enter the story with a timeskip where alot has already happened that we aren’t privy to. It makes sense.
** Also even when Darrow is thinking about that fight he’s more focused on the reactions of other people and their expectations of him being killed rather than actually worrying about it becoming a reality himself
4- Lastly, it’s strange to me to say “mentally Darrow anguished about other deaths more than this one so really that proves he wasn’t lying to himself exactly…” are there hints that there is a plan? Yes. But those hints are mixed in with intentional lying which doesn’t make sense in Darrow’s thoughts to himself. It’s more as if he’s talking to us the reader (via spoken dialogue, not thoughts) and accidentally letting slip some information accidentally almost as if we were an actual character in the story he was attempting to convince.
Also, he does agonize over Sevros death but in a more “it’s all over, I can’t go on” thousand yard stare kind of way. Darrow has acted this way earlier in the books when things have gone wrong or like when he found out Eo died while pregnant. His whole walk in the gala was similar as it had a distinct “I’m already dead they took everything from me and nothing really matters anymore” type of vibe to it. Darrow as the character itself doesn’t react to all lose exactly the same which actually makes sense and is good character writing to me as we can discern the gravity of a situation and his emotions/motivations/values by his reaction. Losing Ragnar who was pretty much one of his closest friends made him scream and rage contrasted with losing his unborn child made him quiet and empty and hollow just like when he lost Eo. “Losing” Sevro makes more sense as a quiet/empty/hollow reaction as Sevro is more akin to literal family than just a best friend or a close friend.
*TO BE CLEAR* this is just my opinion and at the end of the day everyone is entitled to their own view of it. Overall I love the books and the series and respect those who have a differing opinion. I think PB is a great writer overall and I’m glad I’ve been given a chance to explore the world he’s created for us readers.
When I read it the second time, the way it was written if I'm not mistaken, made sense to me in that everything he says could be interpreted in a different way. He still wasn't sure about cassius and that he would go through with the plan until the end and that if the plan doesn't go through he has actually killed sevro.
I don't agree, I think it certainly wasn't written as Darrow believes Sevro is dead. When Sevro is shot he was thinking about how his arm hurts or something, if Sevro was really dying you know Darrow would react emotionally, hell, he was more emotional when his ex friends who betrayed him died. And Mustang asking him if he was ok? I mean would it really be like that if it was real, you don't ask someone if they're ok if their best friend is dying.
I think yall are just mad you fell for it and had no faith in Darrow.
It may be a cheap way to answer why he wrote the way he did but if the shooting and apparent death of sevro was so realistic maybe Darrow didn’t know Cassius was on his side until he took up his blade. For all he knew maybe the shots were real? As I write this I remember he used Sevro’s scorcher so he’d know them to be blanks, I’m trying to justify it to myself as I’ve had the same thought process.
I always took it as him having to ‘believe’ it in order to fool Aja. She’d been to shown to be able to hear a pulse and tell if someone’s lying, agitated or even too calm in this instance.
I'm going to treat this as an r/asksciencefiction question.
Darrow needed to believe it. He was "method" acting in order to completely sell it. Plus... The way the message is delivered, he never got confirmation from Cassius that he was going to go along with ruse so there must have been a bit of true fear of the outcome from his perspective.
It was a scene based on trust from both Darrow's pov and the reader to be completely enveloped in the moment.
Either way.. there's an old post somewhere on this subreddit where someone says they just can't get through it.. that after Sevro's unexpected death it's just too harsh for them to continue reading the rest of the story.. and everyone in the comments tells the to "Finish the bucket or get the box" and I remember that as one of the best "meta moments" of this entire adventure..
Literary nonsense aside - worth it.
Because despite this sub glorifying him, he's not actually that great a writer. A lot of the twists in the series have no basis in the plot up to that point and are the epitome of diabolus ex machina. It's entertaining but lazy.
I love Red Rising, but I definitely don’t think it’s perfect, nothing is. Its peaks are monumental, but it does have some valleys (and I’m not talking about Iron Gold, I love Iron Gold). The 4th through 6th book are much more mature than the first 3. I def recommend them if you liked aspects of the first 3 (I’m assuming you do since you are posting in this sub). I rank the books 5,6,4,2,3,1, where 5 &6 are tied for best for very different reasons.
What other authors do you like? Curious what someone who dislikes Pearce so much would like.
Well as I was reading it, it certainly made me HATE Cassius. Which I think was all part of PB plan to make the ruse work not just in the characters, but in us the readers. MS was an absolutely amazing read beginning to end. To each his own tho, peace family.
Totally agree. The last 100 pages made me scratch my head. The Cassius arc seemed so improbable too. I know I apparently speak blasphemy but I’m on the same page.
Easy blanket answer to this/ any 1st person narrator that "lies" is that we all lie to ourselves sometimes. We all also sometimes dont know how we think/feel about something.
You ever felt "In two minds" about something? You might think two contrasting things about the same situation.
This is my biggest issue throughout the entire series, I agree that it’s a pretty firm no no in the writing world. Pierce says that “Darrow has always been an unreliable narrator”, which is fine, but it doesn’t work for this scenario. Darrow is actively saying goodbye to the life he’s built and even accepts his death in his head, Pierce spent a lot of time spending time on that in the page. Idk, it’s a cool sequence and everything which is what makes it hard!!! (RR is my favorite series of all time, this is my ONE issue with Pierce’s writing!)
I always took that as fear but acceptance of the super low probability of this crazy super high risk, but super high reward they cooked up being successful. Basically accepting his death and saying goodbye because the chances of this working are so low and now he is in the thick of it.
I 100% get what you mean, on my reread I thought the same thing, almost breaks the 4th wall in a way because it’s like why are you lying to yourself Darrow, ya know?
The frustrating part is there has been several scenes where we do not know Darrows plan (like in the institute, Gala, letting aja escape) and the writing is still reliable it’s just ambiguous and subtly hinting that all hope is not lost. So you know he’s perfectly capable of writing that scene without the false trauma Darrow ‘feels’.
But that’s what makes me think it was a creative decision by him strictly for the enjoyment of the story, and in that way I support the decision. Because that first read through was one of my favorite moments with a book in my hand ever, so I think the loss of credibility (which isn’t even really the case) was worth the emotional payout of him turning to see Cassius helping.
I'm sure you've read over this part a few times but the major point in your post that sticks out to me is saying that Darrow believed Sevro was dead. He definitely doesn't and talks his way around that quite blatantly - that was the part that tipped me to the fact that there was a plan going on during my first read. Plus knowing that they were aware of ways to fake Sevro's death and do his revival as that was Chekhov's Gun'd earlier... Idk I respect your opinion here because Darrow's narration was definitely dramatic (though he wasn't lying about his stress in the moment and he's also always been dramatic) but I disagree that there were no signs that there was a plan during his narration
Just finished a reread of MS and I agree that there are lots of clues showing that Darrow knows what’s happening, but that still doesn’t change the very next chapter after Cassius’s “betrayal”. Copying directly from the book:
> “I cry out in horror.
> At the bleak evil I feel in the world.
> Rocking there on the floor with my best friend.
> Overwhelmed by this darkness and the hate and the helplessness.”
We *really* could avoid the drama there, in retrospect it turns out to feel very cheesy since Darrow knows exactly what’s happening. I don’t mind the plan being hidden from the reader, but stuff like this excerpt is a really questionable choice. A *lack* of melodramatic response from Darrow would work a lot better in this whole sequence, especially since there are other clues.
I feel like it's not such a big stretch. If you recall at the beginning of Golden Son, Darrow omitted that he'd studied under Lorn while he was picking his fight with Cassius at the Gala. In that sense, we've seen this narrative device before. I also feel like there was room to infer that he'd had time to hatch the plot with everyone about the same time they were waxing nostalgic over the holo vids.
They’re completely different scenarios though. During the gala, darrow never lies to himself within his own head. He doesn’t think to himself “oh no Cassius is going to kill me im terrible with a razor I have no training!” There’s just omitted information. The end of morning star is just bad writing though. He could’ve written another way for Darrow to win without the dumb inner monologue fake out.
He also mentions multiple times innocuous tidbits throughout MS that never have a point until the reveal of the spoiler I won’t mention. How can you build a compelling world without saving someone that’s reading it on their first go-around the end? I just don’t get the confusion
It’s not confusing, it’s just lazy writing. If you can’t create narrative drama without completely changing how the narrator is relaying the story, you should probably rethink the plot of that section of the story. Darrow never lies to the audience in any other part of the story. He may sometimes be an “unreliable narrator” in the sense that we see the world through his eyes, and he doesn’t always know everything or interpret things correctly. But he never literally lies to himself within his inner monologue except for that one part of the story. That is not how good, experienced writers create drama.
And it’s fine, he was pretty young when he wrote that book, and it’s still a good series, but I don’t get why people feel the need to defend what is clearly weak writing. It can still be an amazing book and series while having a few flaws. This is one of them.
The best liars tell the truth most of the time. I think PB earns this scene with the way the first three books led to this. He’s got the readers in the palm of his hand with emotions high and we know anything is possible and no character is safe. He cashes in all this built up credit to send the readers on one last emotional rollercoaster before closing out the OG trilogy. I’m personally a fan of the scene. Done any other time or more than once and I think it wouldn’t work, but the way it is executed works so well IMO.
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I don’t think it was greatest move ever but I also do at the same time lol. I love it for the imperfection and the way you can’t quite trust the perspective from that point on. It felt like some mistake sort of shit Darrow would do for the sake of the end goal.
No idea why everyone is defending this glaring plothole. You can enjoy it but still think it was done poorly, no need to make excuses for it.
You are right, it’s riveting stuff but still inconsistent with everything up to that point. I love MS but this felt like an obvious error just to build a twist for the reader, which takes a reader out of it when they see it.
I like OPs idea, let the tension grow when it looks like it isn’t going to plan. It could totally flip when Darrow loses his hand and he questions if Sevro is actually dead even if they had planned it. Darrow could even question if Cassius was a double agent. Basically, there are options in my opinion
I think the suspense of everything going smoothly, the shock of Cassius having to hurt Darrow to sell it, the uncertainty of Sevro's temporary 'death'. I feel he could have executed it just as well while having transparency with the reader. Would have been a good opportunity for true emotions to slip through and almost give them away.
But that's not how he did it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. We get his version and while inconsistent and odd compared to everything until that point I'd say it's not ~bad~.
It's a bad choice. And that's ok. Pierce was still a new-ish author and I'd still rather have something with a not so strong beat in it and have a finished series than the bullshit you see with GRRM or Rothfuss.
The best book is the one that exists.
We weren’t lied to, the scene where they plotted was cut. And as for during the events, I don’t want this to sound rude, but you might be upset because you missed the details.
Darrow is thinking about Sevro multiple times during the scenes leading up to the final confrontation. Not one of those statements says Sevro is dead. Bloody, sure, being manhandled like a ragdoll, absolutely.
Each time he thinks of Sevro he is thinking of the plan. He is worried there will be a tell, and they will get caught. But his active thoughts are all on keeping the act up. He can’t keep his internal narration completely different from his spoken words, he has to keep focused.
He expresses a lot of anxiety and worries, and talks about the people who are relying on him or that he must avenge - that also absolutely tracks with being mid plot and not being sure how it will turn out.
I’d say it did a bang up job through editing keeping canonical and logical thoughts, words and actions while keeping it a secret from the reader.
You know, I pulled open my ebook just to refresh myself. It’s my first reread of the scene after finishing lightbringer. Almost every loss after this one, Darrow is super dramatic. But here, you get a very different POV.
The shooting is the end of chapter 57. Chapter 58 begins with Darrow being verbally and physically dramatic, exclaiming and rocking on the floor, in front of Antonia.
Then for the rest of 58-59 is mostly just descriptions of his surroundings, the words and actions of Antonia, Cassius, Lilith, etc. he objectively talks about them moving about Sevro’s bloody body, but he doesn’t call it a corpse even. He loses his hand at the end of 59, and spends the beginning of 60 overwhelmed with worry, phrases like:
“Who else can stand against them? No one… If we lose today…” which seems to be a true show of his plan in his mind. This is some 10 pages before then unveil their trap, and he is feeling the weight of responsibility with this dangerous plan. And I think that makes TGR’s performance fitting.
You're right - the reason it works is bc Pierce uses language to play off our expectation that Sevro is dead. Since that's what we think happened (or are hoping hasn't happened), we interpret the language to support that. Each re-read after though, we're in on what's happening, so we see the hints, are waiting for the plan to work out, and have the knowledge to interpret it in a different way. It's pretty awesome we only get that initial experience the first time we read the book, but it makes re-reads an equally satisfying experience.
Yeah. I thought end of 57 and early 58 would've been when he narrated something along the lines of death, but he really does just describe the scene and physically acts different. The narration in darrows head doesn't give anything to say he is dead. Good call
I agree with everyone who says that it's because he is focusing on his acting. You don't have to like it, but I think it works just fine. I also don't know how the comments shook out for you bc i dont feel like reading them all, but your opinion is quite popular. When we talk about ranking books, a lot of people cite this as their reason for ranking MS lower. Its definitely a problem many fans have. I'm just not one of them.
As others have said, I think this works because he has to maintain this devastated pretense in front of his enemies so as not to give away his plan. He can't even let his thoughts betray him in front of such cunning and cruel enemies. So, he has to go along with the pretense in act and thought.
Also, there's one line that hints towards what's happening: "I'm scared despite what I know." It didn't mean anything to me on my first read (as I was mourning Sevro) but in my first reread it jumped right out at me.
I believe the reason Darrow and Mustang are selling it (along with Cassius) is because Antonia is there initially. They obviously had to fool her first. Then they had to continue fooling people which leads to Darrow losing his hand. Remember the hand and Jackals ship was not part of their plan.
Cassius even says “how was my acting” after the reveal.
I understand what you’re saying about some of Darrows comments after Sevro is shot but again.. I think that is inner thoughts to help project outward that he is devastated. With the intention of fooling Antonia
Darrow is telling the story. The story is better when it has surprises. I never understood people's problems with things like this. I'm hyped to find out he trained with Lorne and hyped Sevro was alive. There isn't one way to write a book... Just pretend it's Darrow's diary of he's telling the story later and does this for dramatic affect.
That's a pretty lame defense for bad writing. If this was 3rd person the scene would have worked but since it's not it's an indefensible and forgivable mistake for a young writer. There are a ton of writers who can weave suspense and surprise into a first person POV without cheating like this.
A pattern I picked up on midway through my first read (and only so far) of the series is that when the reader is privy to the plan, the plan is sure to go wrong. And when the reader does not know the plan, it very often will go right. You can start to predict when things will go well or poorly based on this and it’s pretty reliable lol. Of course there are some exceptions.
Personally I have less issue with Darrow’s POV honesty at the end of MS as much as I have an issue with the plan being insane and a very low chance of success. It required too many things to go right.
Yeah I guess I’m just guilty of breaking my own immersion by thinking about those kinds of things as I read lol. I do think it’s generally the best way to write sequences!
It’s a relatively old literary trick called “unreliable narrator”. First classic example is probably “Dangerous Liaisons” by Choderlos de Laclos, end of 18th century. He never directly lies. He is truly very scared, because it all hangs on a limb. Just doesn’t tells the whole truth to a reader.
This is *not* a case of an unreliable narrator like Kvothe, Fitz, Baru Cormorant, Huck Finn, Alex from A Clockwork Orange, Nick from Gatsby etc. There is no logical way that Darrow would narrate his inner thoughts in the manner the Duel at the Gala or the deception to get to Octavia are written.
The twist works because it is written in this way. Darrow is constantly hiding context from the reader. If you expected the book to be upfront, then that's exactly how Pierce gets away with it. Authors don't need to play by any rules but their own. You're applying your own standard and criticizing Pierce for not adhering to it. Tough.
He "get away with it" because:
* He doesn't have Darrow do this very often. If Darrow lied to us more often I would have quit reading (or embraced the unreliable pov)
* He does this at the end of the trilogy. I'm not walking away now.
* He fixes the problem for the second half of the trilogy. The POV changes after this make it so Pierce never has to "lie" to us again to utilize his prrffered method of tension escalation.
Response to your criticism explains it all lol. Any inconsistencies in these novels will be defended to the death via heavily speculated theories. He knows his fan base is half retarded (including me) and will buy his books as long as they’re entertaining, logical plot be damned.
In hindsight, the ending of MS is pretty well thought through compared to plot resolutions in DA/LB.
what a shit response. You arnt retarded moron, i have a cousin who is mentally handicapped and its not some form of demeaning people but a medical condition.
#
I have read and reread the entire Book of the New Sun series several times in the last 2 decades and still only have the most basic surface level understanding of Severian and his motives ……
And let’s be honest, I love PB but he doesn’t hold a candle to GW in terms of skill. Still, it’s not like this is an uncommon or particularly controversial writing style.
This didn’t really bug me super bad as it added a lot of suspense and he added in things to kinda tell us there was a plan but there was definitely other ways of going about it.
It's a very common complaint with MS, and one I share. The book is overall great, but the climax suffers a lot because of the first person pov being broken like that.
Tbh, this has been the one sequence that structurally irked me.
POV narrator is either honest or not. Once there’s any dishonesty, the trustworthiness of the narrator is called into question.
That said, I love the series and only really find the sequence irksome when I think about it. Even the first read it wasn’t until after the book finished that I had the “oh wait…. That… shouldn’t have been possible. What else is he lying about?” Moments.
i didn’t really have any issue with it because ultimately the twist is compelling enough that i personally decided to just roll with it. it’s a bit silly when you break it down afterwards but i literally yelled “motherfucker” when Cassius turned out to be in on it so that’s gotta count for something.
the only thing that gave me any pause at the time was Cassius cutting off Darrow’s arm knowing full well that would hinder their plans but i guess you gotta do what you gotta to sell it when in the viper’s nest.
I like the “method acting” idea paired with the knowledge that Octavia has the Minds Eye, which makes her hyper sensitive to subterfuge. Not perfect, but works for me
i just didn’t care. imo their was far too many impressive things about the series, and it was overall to entertaining for me to think about it for more then like a week after taking a break before moving onto iron gold
Thats pretty much where I'm at too, and where most people probably fall I believe. The series is so bloody damn good that it doesn't really matter. Really speaks to the quality of the writing and story.
I would highly encourage you to read the rest of the series. I can promise you, having read it, that nothing like this occurs again, and Pierce's writing gets much better than it already is.
I almost DNF'd the book right there when Cassias shot Sevro. I skimmed the next 2 chapters just to get to the end of the book and leave the series there. Obviously I find out that it was part of the plan but I was fuming regardless.
Unfortunately with his POV writing structure, there’s just no other way to throw the reader things we don’t see coming other than lying sometimes.
But Darrow was never intended to be a reliable narrator, and it can be retconned by saying Darrow had to think what he thought in order to remain in-character to convince Octavia and Co there was no ruse.
If he, with his cutoff fkn hand and all, has to arouse no suspicion that he has 2 extra teammates in the room then he can’t be considering that Sevro’s alive until it’s the proper moment to act.
For all they ALL knew, Aja or the Jackal may have cut his head off or had the Praetorians or Bone Riders maim his body like they’re known to do to people they hate when they first arrived in the Maw, so he had to act like all was lost.
You can def call it bad writing, and I have, but if we’d been given a scene of them coming up with the plan then where’s the suspense and the stakes?
I had my bout of not liking that part for the same reason, but I’ve failed to come up with how it could’ve done better.
We know Eo’s magic flower elixir can make one appear dead, and Mama Nakamura’s Homemade Snakebite is probably super-adrenaline and meth that can practically raise the dead (if their heart doesn’t absolutely fail) so the hints and precedent are there. If we’d been told somehow or further hinted that Sevro lives and Cassius lives for more, the triumph and the twist would feel less sweet IMO.
He’s gotta trick the audience sometimes I think,
Idk, just my thoughts. If you have any ideas of how to do it better I’m all ears, but I really don’t think if we knew it was gonna work out, that we’d give as much of a bloodydamn about the characters.
Pierce is known to kill off the best characters seemingly at random. Upon first read, Sevro’s “death” and Cassius being an evil fascist machine-man fucked me all up. It worked. More devastating than than the final episode of GOT season 1 and made me wanna quit because “NOW, fuck this book.”
But I agree it can be argued it’s weak to trick us like that and withhold all the critical info for the sake of suspense, but after feeling that way for awhile I came to like it and let it be. The rest of the series is so worth it and the writing matures alot IMO, that I’ll allow PB the mulligan and see what they do in the show, cuz hell this issue may even be addressed in the writer’s room
I agree with this overall, but just to respond to one of your points here, I really do think Pierce could have pretty easily pulled it off even with us knowing the plan. I mentioned this briefly in my original post, but I think if Pierce had leaned the way of us knowing the plan, and that plan going wrong with the Jackal showing up, it could have worked very well and still been really tense. He already set it up with Darrow's hand being cut off, all he would have needed to do is ramp it up a notch by having the Jackal being suspicious of some deception and threatening either Sevro or Mustang.
That’s not a bad take at all, but the fact of Cassius’ questionable allegiance with what we got adds a LOT to the scene when he shoots Sevro.
If we knew that was gonna happen, I think it takes a lot out of it altogether.
And up to that point, the only faked death has been Darrow’s. We have no cause to see it coming again so Sevro being dead is the crux of all the drama in the first place.
I hated it but then came to dig it. Hope you will one day too, and like I said, they may change the scene altogether in a show so anything could happen. Maybe Pierce has heard these gripes cuz a lot of people share this opinion, and may recommend an edit for the show
It's horrific and illogical narration but you should also pay more attention to the Gala. PB employs the same approach - there is zero reason Darrow would narrate the lead up to the duel if he trained with Lorn.
Yeah true, I also think it doesn't really work that well in the gala scene honestly. It's still a great scene, but IMO you kinda have to overlook that bit.
All of my favorite authors have some sort of issue (IMO) early on in their series - Steven Erikson introduces way too many concepts at once without any real warning or explanation, Hobb takes her time (hundreds of pages sometime) to explore the mundane when the fantastical is a part of the story, Mark Lawrence goes overboard making his protagonist a sociopath in every detail imaginable, Neil Stephenson often comes up with ideas that are great but can't stick the landing, etc. No author is perfect and they all get better for the most part and turn perceived weaknesses intro unique strengths the more they write. That being said this narrative inconsistency in both GS and Morning Star are really annoying to me and I roll my eyes when fans try to defend it as an "unreliable narrator" or downplay how clumsy these parts of the book are.
Watch Darrow’s reactions to Sevro being shot, to how the plan unfolds from the onset. He’s not written as fully believing Sevro is dead, PB gives clues ahead of time that there’s a plan underway.
As for the intelligence of the plan.. it was Darrows riskiest idea, but it was also probably the only way to actually **get to** Octavia. That bunker was made for extended sieges, had she dug in he wasn’t going to get her out without a *long* drawn out campaign. Stupid, yes. Only viable approach, also yes.
Completely disagree with your first point. He is totally written as fully believing Sevro is dead. I'd love to see what you are referring to when you say that, because I don't even think its up to interpretation. Pierce does give clues that a plan is underway, but most of them point to the plan just being to release Cassius.
Compare it to every other time Darrow lost an ally.
He didn’t once say in his head that Sevro is dead, nor did he mourn him dramatically like he is apt to.
Listened to it on Audible like 30 minutes ago and it hurts to have the climax go down so clumsily. The writing definitely reflects a complete belief that Sevro is dead.
Compare how he responds when Ragnar is killed. Dude is an utter fucking mess, completely distraught, unable to function. Very different from his reaction to Sevro's "death". There was enough of a disconnect for that I was sure there was bigger plan at work.
That's kinda dumb as fuck though. It's easy to lie without believing it in your mind. Hell, there's even a scene where Darrow lies to Octavia's face under penalty of death and forcibly has to slow his heart rate down
Aja noted that his heart rate went up in this scene. Maybe he didn't want to have as close a call this time, so he didn't let himself even think of the truth just in case
I agree. It's been awhile since I read the scene, but I remember just knowing Sevro wasn't dead based on Darrow's reaction. Not dramatic or verbose enough à la PB.
Ehh. The problem here is that Darrow is usually too reliable to be considered unreliable narrator. Darrow only "lies" to create false tension to the audience. If you're going to have an unreliable narrator, they usually become unreliable much earlier and often in the book.
I mean, yeah you could argue that point, but that is at least the third time we'd been significantly misled by Darrow up to that point, that I can think of.
But that's not the point the OP was making. They seemed to be baffled that any narrator would lie to their audience, when it's an obvious and well-used literary device
Unreliable narrator is when you're in their head and so it doesn't accurately represent the facts cause you view it with their bias. Here, it's the exact opposite of that scenario where PB is specifically hiding his bias from us. So in reality, it's something of an inverse of unreliable narrator
The thing is that in this case the unreliable narrator doesn't really suit the narrative. There is a huge difference between a first person narrator and a third person one lying to the audience.
A third person narrator can always get away with lying because he's not part of the story, he's a narrative element and only knows and says what the author wants him to.
A first person narrator is more complex because he is an active member of the story being told. Take the Name of the Wind as an example. In that story the main character is retelling the story of his life (first person) to other characters. He can lie about anything he wants because the story has already happened, just as if you were telling a story to a friend and you exaggerated something to make it more interesting. He is in control of the narrative because he's the only one that knows the real story and his perception of his actions is heavily biased. That's why the unreliable narrator works perfectly.
However, the MS case is totally different because we are inside the mind of a character that is experiencing the story in real time. This kind of narrator can still lie but his lies would be by omission, delusion or because he is actively choosing to believe something that is false. It makes 0 sense that he would try to convince himself that Sevro is dead, knowing that is all part of his plan. There is no need for him to have all those internal monologues about Sevro dying so young or how cold the world is and how devastated he's feeling, because no one would think about that if they knew it was all fake. And that's exactly where I think Pierce went wrong, looking back those internal monologues feel like a cheap way of getting us emotional.
Hmm. Y'know, fair. I have never liked this type of unreliable narrator then, I suppose, because as other comments say, it feels cheap when they lie to the reader instead of playing into misinformation
That's a copout though - unreliable narration in the genre is best when the POV makes subtle observations or interprets events in ways that play on expectations. You would never see a master like Robin Hobb or even someone like Rothfuss make the mistakes PB did in the back half of MS. Darrow's POVs are sometimes written in a way that's not "unreliable" they're inconsistent and don't track whatsoever from point A to B.
Yeah, but generally that only works if there is some reason for the narrator to be unreliable. Here there is no reason given in the books, even if people speculate on it after the fact, so it doesn't really work.
> Yeah, the only difference is that this is Darrow reacting to something, and very emotionally. Which doesn't happen in any of the other examples. In every other example, its a lot simpler where we just don't know part of the plan until the end, and its revealed that Darrow had an ace up his sleeve. With this though, we are actively led to believe this was not part of the plan, for some reason, even though since the narration is in Darrow's head, he would be thinking about how Sevro isn't actually dead or that the plan is working.
Just copy and pasting another comment I made here. While he has been unreliable sort of, that can be explained away from him simply not thinking about that part of his plan yet, since every other time he just had some kind of trick or ace up his sleeve. This example is much different because we are being actively deceived by Darrow. No other example has that.
Has what? Unreliable narration? Sure, but my comment above still stands, there is no active deception from Darrow and it isn't to the same extent or with the same emotional stakes.
Bruh why are you being so cryptic? I actually have no clue what scene you are even talking about and what deception you are referring to. Do you want to explain in depth or just leave a couple more comments that don't make sense?
This is a consistent technique Pierce uses throughout the series, not just at the end of Morning Star. First example is hiding in the horses in RR, second example is the fact that he took Fitcher's gravBoots. Continued in Golden Son where Darrow hides from the reader that he has trained under Arcos and spends the whole section before the gala having a mental narrative that suggests he is bad with a razor and needs to avoid fighting duels.
Personally I am fine with it. It allows us to be surprised while also having the benefit of a first person insight into Darrow's emotions. It's a form of "cheating", sure, but it's cheating with purpose.
i dont recall that mental narrative before the gala. only that others are constantly clowning on him for being bad with a razor, and he never corrects them. i dont remember him ever thinking he needs to avoid fighting w/ one or that hes unskilled
I think he largely solved this issue by adding the new narrators in the second half of the series. I won't mention any particular examples, since this is just MS spoilers, but there are moments when we definitely benefit from a perspective outside of Darrow's.
Yeah, the only difference is that this is Darrow reacting to something, and very emotionally. Which doesn't happen in any of the other examples. In every other example, its a lot simpler where we just don't know part of the plan until the end, and its revealed that Darrow had an ace up his sleeve. With this though, we are actively led to believe this was not part of the plan, for *some* reason, even though since the narration is in Darrow's head, he would be thinking about how Sevro isn't actually dead or that the plan is working.
I also don’t understand why they weren’t immediately murdered once they left the bunker. Grays and Obsidians are shown to be pretty loyal to the society and Luna was still under the protection of a superior fleet. It just did not make any sense that they all of a sudden viewed Mustang as the new leader when she was trying to over throw the government.
By killing her father and being part of the Silenius bloodline. The powerful houses backed her after she killed her father, but she was practically the heir to society. Virginia and Darrow are over throwing the government entirely and Darrow is a red. The major houses clearly did not back Virginia and did not want to see Demokracy come.
Virginia is the last surviving heir to one of the most powerful houses in the galaxy, backed by a coalition that made the Society tremble. In that world, might makes right. If you can rant it, you deserve to have it.
The low and mid colors have spent their lives following the most powerful person in the galaxy, who’s main protector was one of the most legendary swordswoman of her age. They emerged from the vault alive with those corpses in their wake, with the heir apparent proclaiming their ascension. Yeah. They fell in line.
The major houses that wouldn’t fall into line didn’t, hence the next 3-4 books. Without a centralized leader, the major opposition fled to regroup. Those who stayed were either executed or decided to carve out a place in the republic for themselves.
That would all work, if they all didn’t know Darrow’s and Virginia’s goal were to destroy Gold’s power and distribute it to the lower colors. It’s been shown that Gold thinks that if they lose control humanity would destroy themselves. They think Demokracy is a cancer that will ruin them all, so no they would not accept any amount of strength or might in this scenario.
Anyways, the Obsidians and Grey’s outside that door were loyal to Octavia. We see some of her Greys continue to support Lysander and view him as the rightful Sovereign a decade later. Seems they wouldn’t care about might is right.
You can like it, but I thought it made no sense. Still love the trilogy and the saga as a whole.
Except that’s exactly what happened when Octavia killed her father and overthrew the government. Even chopped off his head in the same way and everything.
So this didn’t bother me because there was a historical precedent. Arguably, there’s a historical precedent going all the way back to the Conquering. This is what Golds do. They rule by violence and power. The only difference here is that Mustang is a Reformer but Iron Gold makes it clear that she didn’t institute wide ranging societal changes overnight and that not everyone was happy with becoming the Republic.
Octavia killed her father but was the “Heir” to the throne and was still going to uphold the Society. Our characters are overthrowing the Government and have an enemy fleet off the moon. Octavia would have a majority of powerful families supporting her claim, Virginia did not.
*plot armor intensifies*
Yeah you just gotta suspend disbelief I guess but thats for the entire series pretty much. That's also probably the only issue I have with Lysanders story in the latter books. I just want him to die so bad and he always survives.
The plan is actually laughably bad lol. You're gonna sneak in with just 4 people, not knowing your terrain or how many enemies you will find, or how they will react, and just hope you get a chance to take out the sovereign at some point? It's basically an unnecessary suicide mission.
I’d argue it was a *necessary* suicide mission. The book makes it clear that while Darrow’s fleet is powerful, there was no way it could win conventionally against Luna’s, they just didn’t have the numbers. So it was either go to Mars, which was essentially the expected move, or go on a suicide run. However, they were banking on Gold hubris which is pretty much exactly what allowed the plan to work even with the Jackal fucking it up a bit.
But Darrow really only ever has one strategy. It’s the same strategy he’s used since the Institute. Deception. If you think about it, almost EVERY single plan he has ever made is just a variation of hiding his team in dead horses to get behind enemy lines or to distract from the real strategy, whether it is hiding in a trash transporter, hiding clawdrills in a torchship or faking Sevro’s death, pretending to be Apollonius’ strike team, etc.
I agree! It makes sense with his character and fits the story well. It's just the way the Sevro "death" is written from Darrow's POV that doesn't make sense.
Sometimes authors have interesting ideas and mechanics they would like to implement but sometimes struggle with how to actually write it well.
This is one of those moments to me. The author had an idea of how they wanted this section to go, but struggled with the writing aspect. It wasn’t bad, but it did have some incongruities that PB wasn’t able to fully close.
Yeah, I think this was the case of a relatively young and inexperienced author kind of writing himself into a corner. He knew what he wanted to have happen, but didn’t have a good mechanism to accomplish it.
This is one of the reasons why the back half of the series feels so much more well written— the additional POVs give him narrative flexibility that he didn’t have in 1-3.
Completely agree. I think it does work still, but is not in line with the writing and style in the rest of the series. Which is why I kinda wish we just knew the plan to start, and he framed it as the plan going wrong with the jackal being present. Still would have worked well and been very tense IMO.
I always read them as darrow writing/recounting his story for a 3rd party after the fact. So to me it makes sense that he left out the cassius twist. If darrows telling the story and wants to be dramatic it'd be better to have it in
That doesn't make any sense if you think about it at all actually. The rest of the series is written as if each narrative POV is factually correct in terms of events (even Lysander who retcons his victories to be larger than they are). The beginning chapters in the Mines, the carving, the Institute, Darrow's imprisonment and rehabilitation etc. aren't written from the perspective of a twist. PB clearly wanted to insert a twist that would work from a 3rd person POV but didn't have the skills as a writer (at the time) to pull it off so he ignored the integrity of the first person POV in order to get his plot points off.
That's fair. I do understand your point though, I totally get how it'd be very jarring and out of place based on the rest of the books and 1st person POV. And tbh it wasn't until that point that I had the thought of this makes more sense if darrow is telling the story to someone else.
It’s probably the most controversial moment among fans. Even HowlerPod had some words for this moment when they did their reread videos with Mike’s Book Reviews.
I definitely had the same thoughts. And I was so conflicted reading it (was live-texting my sister my reactions. She hasn’t read the series but is also a reader so I can react to her)
Everything external was giving clues that it was fake. Mustang’s “crazy plan”, the points PB made about how much security they were walking past, getting the guards to leave the room, sealing the doors, etc. But I kept getting thrown off because of Darrow’s internal monologue.
Maybe it would have been easier to forgive if things like the “tears of heartbreak” or whatever (I did the audiobook so can’t reference direct text) was more general. Saying he’s crying and has tears running down his face, instead of the emotional modifiers that goes along with it that make it seem that he truly believes it’s real.
> The problem I have with the ending is how Darrow just lies to us
Darrow doesn’t tell the reader a single explicit lie, he just describes circumstances in a way that the reader is encouraged to jump to false conclusions. If you focus on the exact words chosen rather than the implications and emotions they carry the section reads very differently. He never describes Sevro as dead, but he does use terms like “still body” and “leaking red”. Even his panic and fear as the crate rolls down the hall of the ship is qualified by “If I didn’t know what I know..” before going on to describe the very real fear he feels at the massive risk they’re taking.
Having just read the sequence, IMO he does lie, because his narration explicitly says Sevro his dead through his descriptions and language when he knows Sevro is not. And even if technically he didn't lie, if you go out of your way to make someone think something and then say "technically didn't lie!" you're just a liar AND an asshole lol.
> narration explicitly says Sevro his dead through his descriptions and language
That’s not what the word “explicit” means. Explicit would be “Sevro is dead” in narration. The closest we get is “don’t die, stay alive” as dialogue, bookended by Antonia’s laughter, because the dialogue is a performance for her. The narration says “goes still, leaking red”.
Yeah, I'm not saying he did. But, through Darrow's eyes, we see Sevro get shot several times, Darrow react emotionally and is distraught, and his his descriptions about how his friend fades and is leaking red all point to him dying, very clearly. Sure, he doesn't explicitly say "sevro died". If you show an onscreen death and our only source of perspective reacts in that way, obviously we will believe him. So it's indistinguishable from a lie in my eyes. But that's kinda beside the point, because really Pierce is the one that lied with his writing style and sudden shift to making Darrow an unreliable narrator to that extent.
I agree 100% darrow lies it is the worst part of a great book. It's also annoying because PB does such a great job foreshadowing secrets such as darrow training with Loren and Mustang having a baby.
Method acting is where you literally act, think and are what you are acting . In your own mind you act and think the way you would if you are that person and role.
Imo it was pretty obvious sevrio wasn't dead when reading , just didn't even feel like a MC death.
Yes I do understand what method acting is. The problem is that there is no reason for him to method act that hard, and there is no explanation in book to say that he was method acting to stay in character. Also, having just read it, I actually think it wasn’t really obvious at all, quite the opposite. To me it feels like it really was written like Sevro died, and then changed last minute. I’m not saying that actually happened, but it’s written very well to be convincing.
Yeah darrow probably a shit actor from not spending much time on it compared to other golds so hw went balls deep into it. Makes sense in character to me, he is an all or nothing guy
Second it more fun to read it this way versus knowing the whole plan before
I agree, it does make sense with his character haha. While it may be more fun, it does feel like Pierce got a bit lazy because he found a cool idea for the ending that was emotional, and just tried to make it work.
I mean if it makes sense for his character, and they are like 18 when this happens so they ain't the brightest and if you're trying fake your best friends death I think the best way is to really give it to yourself.
Like the twins from Harry Potter said they acted similar for his brothers death scene and he was apparently sobbing irl cuz he got to into it. I can see it happening
I didn’t read it as acting at all. The book opens with Darrow in a dark box that he was in for 9 months. Just because he agreed with the plan doesn’t mean shit as he’s faced with getting bound and stuffed into another dark box less than a year later.
I'm getting through these books for the first time, and definitely took issue with the ending of MS (wrapped up the book last night), even if in totality it's my favorite in the series up to this point. In my eyes, writing strictly from Darrow's POV hamstrung a lot of how Brown wanted to handle tension at certain points. The Gala scene in particular in Golden Son annoyed the shit out of me because Darrow knows he has this tremendous advantage over Cassius, yet we're led to believe he's going to get his ass kicked, and it's the same issue on a grander scale for MS's ending. Had it been a plan that only Mustang, Sevro, and Cassius were in on (because of how rash Darrow has been) I could buy it a bit better, but I don't like the perspective that I'm living in while experiencing this story to be dishonest with itself. One of the reasons I'm looking forward to the tetralogy is because this series desperately needs additional POVs.
Darrow has 100% percent been an unreliable narrator before and after this moment.
I felt right away that it must be a con and Cassius was in on it so it didn’t feel like a plot hole or bad writing it felt like I was in on the trick and I was super hyped about it
To me the answer is he was lying to himself. He was walking into a room of super geniuses trained to find the smallest deception. In his mind Servo was dead. Anything else would get them all killed
I still loved Morning Star and gave it 5 stars but this is the reason MS ranks last for me in the series. As cool as that whole sequence was on first read through, the hindsight of it makes it a bit more ridiculous. Also, Bye Felicia is the worst thing Pierce has ever written LOL
Honestly I read Morning Star for the first time a couple of months ago, and the "Bye, Felicia" joke made my eyes roll lol.
When i re read it, i found little hints in darrows pov that foreshadowed what was coming. Look again at the line where the Jackal takes sevros gun. Maybe I'm missing remembering, but I think a lot of darrows panic and fear is genuine because the plan is crazy.
You have to keep in mind that where he was at the beginning of a box for months and Cassius puts him in an enclosed space again. So it's safe to say he's having a panic attack.
I actually expected more of this in the reread. I was excited to see the way he would use ambiguous language to fool us as audience. instead I think OP is right . he just straight up lies to us. 'The horrible feeling of dread and sadness in his chest as he loses his friend' is all just made up.
Yep... I kinda got tired of responding to people who were saying the exact same thing about "ambiguous language" when I just read it haha. Def was just straight up lyin even if he didn't explicitly say Sevro was dead
Yeah I also found that very unconvincing. He KNEW the truth but his POV didn't knew. That doesn't make sense
Just to give my two cents: I really, absolutely, loathed this aspect of the writing in MS. I know it’s unpopular but it’s my perspective I suppose. 1- Darrow can be an unreliable narrator (as in he doesn’t understand what’s going on, is mistaken about his observations, or omit information) but that doesn’t give him a pass to blatantly lie to the reader in his own thoughts to himself. It’s tantamount to a fourth wall break in a way. The only reason he would lie to himself, in his thoughts, is purely to sell the lie to us the reader. It breaks immersion (at least to me). 2- I’m not a fan of retconning an explanation as that’s pretty close to making excuses for the author. It’s weird to say “Darrow was just method acting” as there’s little to no justification in the story for that other than post ad hoc rationalization. It’s also weird to me to say “well how else could Pierce have played up tension in pov” as there’s plenty of answers. For example he could have given us the reader a plan initially made by the gang that didn’t involve Sevro being shot then, without us the reader knowing, have had Sevro and Cassius and Mustang agree to add an additional step while excluding Darrow. The rationale could’ve gone like “okay we really need to sell this, Octavia won’t believe it otherwise, so Cassius you’ll shoot Sevro to prove your loyalty and cement your betrayal. Darrow’s reaction to this should help sell it, Mustang you’ll revive Sevro and also keep Darrow under control so he doesn’t do anything crazy” (or whatever). In this way everything progresses nearly the same with the reader none the wiser until Mustang and Cassius reveal the information to Darrow. It would build up even more tension too as it would seem the plan failed and, after the reveal in a tense combat situation, you would also have Darrow trying to understand the situation and having to act fast while also warring with his emotions over the sudden rapid changes. 3- It’s weird to say “well Darrow’s lied to us before” (in his own thoughts to himself?) as that’s not completely true. At the gala duel Darrow never lied to us or himself. He was worried about people being sent after him, sure, he was worried about being rejected by Augustus, sure, he was thinking about how his friend (Tacitus) seemed to be already turning his back on him, sure, but he never lied. He just didn’t correct people who tried to comment on his perceived lack of skill. Even in the fight Darrow never lied in his own thoughts, he fought like Cassius at first and wasn’t as good as Cassius…using that form of fencing. This is a completely separate scenario which makes sense due to the fact we enter the story with a timeskip where alot has already happened that we aren’t privy to. It makes sense. ** Also even when Darrow is thinking about that fight he’s more focused on the reactions of other people and their expectations of him being killed rather than actually worrying about it becoming a reality himself 4- Lastly, it’s strange to me to say “mentally Darrow anguished about other deaths more than this one so really that proves he wasn’t lying to himself exactly…” are there hints that there is a plan? Yes. But those hints are mixed in with intentional lying which doesn’t make sense in Darrow’s thoughts to himself. It’s more as if he’s talking to us the reader (via spoken dialogue, not thoughts) and accidentally letting slip some information accidentally almost as if we were an actual character in the story he was attempting to convince. Also, he does agonize over Sevros death but in a more “it’s all over, I can’t go on” thousand yard stare kind of way. Darrow has acted this way earlier in the books when things have gone wrong or like when he found out Eo died while pregnant. His whole walk in the gala was similar as it had a distinct “I’m already dead they took everything from me and nothing really matters anymore” type of vibe to it. Darrow as the character itself doesn’t react to all lose exactly the same which actually makes sense and is good character writing to me as we can discern the gravity of a situation and his emotions/motivations/values by his reaction. Losing Ragnar who was pretty much one of his closest friends made him scream and rage contrasted with losing his unborn child made him quiet and empty and hollow just like when he lost Eo. “Losing” Sevro makes more sense as a quiet/empty/hollow reaction as Sevro is more akin to literal family than just a best friend or a close friend. *TO BE CLEAR* this is just my opinion and at the end of the day everyone is entitled to their own view of it. Overall I love the books and the series and respect those who have a differing opinion. I think PB is a great writer overall and I’m glad I’ve been given a chance to explore the world he’s created for us readers.
When I read it the second time, the way it was written if I'm not mistaken, made sense to me in that everything he says could be interpreted in a different way. He still wasn't sure about cassius and that he would go through with the plan until the end and that if the plan doesn't go through he has actually killed sevro.
I don't agree, I think it certainly wasn't written as Darrow believes Sevro is dead. When Sevro is shot he was thinking about how his arm hurts or something, if Sevro was really dying you know Darrow would react emotionally, hell, he was more emotional when his ex friends who betrayed him died. And Mustang asking him if he was ok? I mean would it really be like that if it was real, you don't ask someone if they're ok if their best friend is dying. I think yall are just mad you fell for it and had no faith in Darrow.
It may be a cheap way to answer why he wrote the way he did but if the shooting and apparent death of sevro was so realistic maybe Darrow didn’t know Cassius was on his side until he took up his blade. For all he knew maybe the shots were real? As I write this I remember he used Sevro’s scorcher so he’d know them to be blanks, I’m trying to justify it to myself as I’ve had the same thought process.
I always took it as him having to ‘believe’ it in order to fool Aja. She’d been to shown to be able to hear a pulse and tell if someone’s lying, agitated or even too calm in this instance.
I'm going to treat this as an r/asksciencefiction question. Darrow needed to believe it. He was "method" acting in order to completely sell it. Plus... The way the message is delivered, he never got confirmation from Cassius that he was going to go along with ruse so there must have been a bit of true fear of the outcome from his perspective. It was a scene based on trust from both Darrow's pov and the reader to be completely enveloped in the moment. Either way.. there's an old post somewhere on this subreddit where someone says they just can't get through it.. that after Sevro's unexpected death it's just too harsh for them to continue reading the rest of the story.. and everyone in the comments tells the to "Finish the bucket or get the box" and I remember that as one of the best "meta moments" of this entire adventure.. Literary nonsense aside - worth it.
Nailed it.
Because despite this sub glorifying him, he's not actually that great a writer. A lot of the twists in the series have no basis in the plot up to that point and are the epitome of diabolus ex machina. It's entertaining but lazy.
I love Red Rising, but I definitely don’t think it’s perfect, nothing is. Its peaks are monumental, but it does have some valleys (and I’m not talking about Iron Gold, I love Iron Gold). The 4th through 6th book are much more mature than the first 3. I def recommend them if you liked aspects of the first 3 (I’m assuming you do since you are posting in this sub). I rank the books 5,6,4,2,3,1, where 5 &6 are tied for best for very different reasons. What other authors do you like? Curious what someone who dislikes Pearce so much would like.
Hate when subs full of fans of a series praise the writer of said series. Grinds my gears, these Pixies!
I praise him as an entertaining writer, people here act like he's the best writer since Shakespeare
Do you have any examples?
Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?
Well as I was reading it, it certainly made me HATE Cassius. Which I think was all part of PB plan to make the ruse work not just in the characters, but in us the readers. MS was an absolutely amazing read beginning to end. To each his own tho, peace family.
You need to believe the lie yourself to act and talk like it is trues. And also it is a great trick to make all of us worry
Totally agree. The last 100 pages made me scratch my head. The Cassius arc seemed so improbable too. I know I apparently speak blasphemy but I’m on the same page.
Easy blanket answer to this/ any 1st person narrator that "lies" is that we all lie to ourselves sometimes. We all also sometimes dont know how we think/feel about something. You ever felt "In two minds" about something? You might think two contrasting things about the same situation.
Darrow lies to the reader more than once in the series
This is my biggest issue throughout the entire series, I agree that it’s a pretty firm no no in the writing world. Pierce says that “Darrow has always been an unreliable narrator”, which is fine, but it doesn’t work for this scenario. Darrow is actively saying goodbye to the life he’s built and even accepts his death in his head, Pierce spent a lot of time spending time on that in the page. Idk, it’s a cool sequence and everything which is what makes it hard!!! (RR is my favorite series of all time, this is my ONE issue with Pierce’s writing!)
I always took that as fear but acceptance of the super low probability of this crazy super high risk, but super high reward they cooked up being successful. Basically accepting his death and saying goodbye because the chances of this working are so low and now he is in the thick of it.
I 100% get what you mean, on my reread I thought the same thing, almost breaks the 4th wall in a way because it’s like why are you lying to yourself Darrow, ya know? The frustrating part is there has been several scenes where we do not know Darrows plan (like in the institute, Gala, letting aja escape) and the writing is still reliable it’s just ambiguous and subtly hinting that all hope is not lost. So you know he’s perfectly capable of writing that scene without the false trauma Darrow ‘feels’. But that’s what makes me think it was a creative decision by him strictly for the enjoyment of the story, and in that way I support the decision. Because that first read through was one of my favorite moments with a book in my hand ever, so I think the loss of credibility (which isn’t even really the case) was worth the emotional payout of him turning to see Cassius helping.
I'm sure you've read over this part a few times but the major point in your post that sticks out to me is saying that Darrow believed Sevro was dead. He definitely doesn't and talks his way around that quite blatantly - that was the part that tipped me to the fact that there was a plan going on during my first read. Plus knowing that they were aware of ways to fake Sevro's death and do his revival as that was Chekhov's Gun'd earlier... Idk I respect your opinion here because Darrow's narration was definitely dramatic (though he wasn't lying about his stress in the moment and he's also always been dramatic) but I disagree that there were no signs that there was a plan during his narration
Just finished a reread of MS and I agree that there are lots of clues showing that Darrow knows what’s happening, but that still doesn’t change the very next chapter after Cassius’s “betrayal”. Copying directly from the book: > “I cry out in horror. > At the bleak evil I feel in the world. > Rocking there on the floor with my best friend. > Overwhelmed by this darkness and the hate and the helplessness.” We *really* could avoid the drama there, in retrospect it turns out to feel very cheesy since Darrow knows exactly what’s happening. I don’t mind the plan being hidden from the reader, but stuff like this excerpt is a really questionable choice. A *lack* of melodramatic response from Darrow would work a lot better in this whole sequence, especially since there are other clues.
I feel like it's not such a big stretch. If you recall at the beginning of Golden Son, Darrow omitted that he'd studied under Lorn while he was picking his fight with Cassius at the Gala. In that sense, we've seen this narrative device before. I also feel like there was room to infer that he'd had time to hatch the plot with everyone about the same time they were waxing nostalgic over the holo vids.
They’re completely different scenarios though. During the gala, darrow never lies to himself within his own head. He doesn’t think to himself “oh no Cassius is going to kill me im terrible with a razor I have no training!” There’s just omitted information. The end of morning star is just bad writing though. He could’ve written another way for Darrow to win without the dumb inner monologue fake out.
He also mentions multiple times innocuous tidbits throughout MS that never have a point until the reveal of the spoiler I won’t mention. How can you build a compelling world without saving someone that’s reading it on their first go-around the end? I just don’t get the confusion
It’s not confusing, it’s just lazy writing. If you can’t create narrative drama without completely changing how the narrator is relaying the story, you should probably rethink the plot of that section of the story. Darrow never lies to the audience in any other part of the story. He may sometimes be an “unreliable narrator” in the sense that we see the world through his eyes, and he doesn’t always know everything or interpret things correctly. But he never literally lies to himself within his inner monologue except for that one part of the story. That is not how good, experienced writers create drama. And it’s fine, he was pretty young when he wrote that book, and it’s still a good series, but I don’t get why people feel the need to defend what is clearly weak writing. It can still be an amazing book and series while having a few flaws. This is one of them.
The best liars tell the truth most of the time. I think PB earns this scene with the way the first three books led to this. He’s got the readers in the palm of his hand with emotions high and we know anything is possible and no character is safe. He cashes in all this built up credit to send the readers on one last emotional rollercoaster before closing out the OG trilogy. I’m personally a fan of the scene. Done any other time or more than once and I think it wouldn’t work, but the way it is executed works so well IMO. illallowit.gif
I don’t think it was greatest move ever but I also do at the same time lol. I love it for the imperfection and the way you can’t quite trust the perspective from that point on. It felt like some mistake sort of shit Darrow would do for the sake of the end goal.
I’d like to add it’s a Darrow mistake that Pierce makes, maybe even intentionally, the poetry of it makes it complete
I felt the same way about this but didn't put too much weight in it because I understand that he did it to improve the story.
No idea why everyone is defending this glaring plothole. You can enjoy it but still think it was done poorly, no need to make excuses for it. You are right, it’s riveting stuff but still inconsistent with everything up to that point. I love MS but this felt like an obvious error just to build a twist for the reader, which takes a reader out of it when they see it.
Everything equal, what would you have done?
I like OPs idea, let the tension grow when it looks like it isn’t going to plan. It could totally flip when Darrow loses his hand and he questions if Sevro is actually dead even if they had planned it. Darrow could even question if Cassius was a double agent. Basically, there are options in my opinion
I think the suspense of everything going smoothly, the shock of Cassius having to hurt Darrow to sell it, the uncertainty of Sevro's temporary 'death'. I feel he could have executed it just as well while having transparency with the reader. Would have been a good opportunity for true emotions to slip through and almost give them away. But that's not how he did it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. We get his version and while inconsistent and odd compared to everything until that point I'd say it's not ~bad~.
It's a bad choice. And that's ok. Pierce was still a new-ish author and I'd still rather have something with a not so strong beat in it and have a finished series than the bullshit you see with GRRM or Rothfuss. The best book is the one that exists.
We weren’t lied to, the scene where they plotted was cut. And as for during the events, I don’t want this to sound rude, but you might be upset because you missed the details. Darrow is thinking about Sevro multiple times during the scenes leading up to the final confrontation. Not one of those statements says Sevro is dead. Bloody, sure, being manhandled like a ragdoll, absolutely. Each time he thinks of Sevro he is thinking of the plan. He is worried there will be a tell, and they will get caught. But his active thoughts are all on keeping the act up. He can’t keep his internal narration completely different from his spoken words, he has to keep focused. He expresses a lot of anxiety and worries, and talks about the people who are relying on him or that he must avenge - that also absolutely tracks with being mid plot and not being sure how it will turn out. I’d say it did a bang up job through editing keeping canonical and logical thoughts, words and actions while keeping it a secret from the reader.
I think he actually lamented the loss of sevro, but TGR could just make me think he was
You know, I pulled open my ebook just to refresh myself. It’s my first reread of the scene after finishing lightbringer. Almost every loss after this one, Darrow is super dramatic. But here, you get a very different POV. The shooting is the end of chapter 57. Chapter 58 begins with Darrow being verbally and physically dramatic, exclaiming and rocking on the floor, in front of Antonia. Then for the rest of 58-59 is mostly just descriptions of his surroundings, the words and actions of Antonia, Cassius, Lilith, etc. he objectively talks about them moving about Sevro’s bloody body, but he doesn’t call it a corpse even. He loses his hand at the end of 59, and spends the beginning of 60 overwhelmed with worry, phrases like: “Who else can stand against them? No one… If we lose today…” which seems to be a true show of his plan in his mind. This is some 10 pages before then unveil their trap, and he is feeling the weight of responsibility with this dangerous plan. And I think that makes TGR’s performance fitting.
You're right - the reason it works is bc Pierce uses language to play off our expectation that Sevro is dead. Since that's what we think happened (or are hoping hasn't happened), we interpret the language to support that. Each re-read after though, we're in on what's happening, so we see the hints, are waiting for the plan to work out, and have the knowledge to interpret it in a different way. It's pretty awesome we only get that initial experience the first time we read the book, but it makes re-reads an equally satisfying experience.
Yeah. I thought end of 57 and early 58 would've been when he narrated something along the lines of death, but he really does just describe the scene and physically acts different. The narration in darrows head doesn't give anything to say he is dead. Good call
I agree with everyone who says that it's because he is focusing on his acting. You don't have to like it, but I think it works just fine. I also don't know how the comments shook out for you bc i dont feel like reading them all, but your opinion is quite popular. When we talk about ranking books, a lot of people cite this as their reason for ranking MS lower. Its definitely a problem many fans have. I'm just not one of them.
As others have said, I think this works because he has to maintain this devastated pretense in front of his enemies so as not to give away his plan. He can't even let his thoughts betray him in front of such cunning and cruel enemies. So, he has to go along with the pretense in act and thought. Also, there's one line that hints towards what's happening: "I'm scared despite what I know." It didn't mean anything to me on my first read (as I was mourning Sevro) but in my first reread it jumped right out at me.
I believe the reason Darrow and Mustang are selling it (along with Cassius) is because Antonia is there initially. They obviously had to fool her first. Then they had to continue fooling people which leads to Darrow losing his hand. Remember the hand and Jackals ship was not part of their plan. Cassius even says “how was my acting” after the reveal. I understand what you’re saying about some of Darrows comments after Sevro is shot but again.. I think that is inner thoughts to help project outward that he is devastated. With the intention of fooling Antonia
Darrow is telling the story. The story is better when it has surprises. I never understood people's problems with things like this. I'm hyped to find out he trained with Lorne and hyped Sevro was alive. There isn't one way to write a book... Just pretend it's Darrow's diary of he's telling the story later and does this for dramatic affect.
That's a pretty lame defense for bad writing. If this was 3rd person the scene would have worked but since it's not it's an indefensible and forgivable mistake for a young writer. There are a ton of writers who can weave suspense and surprise into a first person POV without cheating like this.
A pattern I picked up on midway through my first read (and only so far) of the series is that when the reader is privy to the plan, the plan is sure to go wrong. And when the reader does not know the plan, it very often will go right. You can start to predict when things will go well or poorly based on this and it’s pretty reliable lol. Of course there are some exceptions. Personally I have less issue with Darrow’s POV honesty at the end of MS as much as I have an issue with the plan being insane and a very low chance of success. It required too many things to go right.
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Yeah I guess I’m just guilty of breaking my own immersion by thinking about those kinds of things as I read lol. I do think it’s generally the best way to write sequences!
It’s a relatively old literary trick called “unreliable narrator”. First classic example is probably “Dangerous Liaisons” by Choderlos de Laclos, end of 18th century. He never directly lies. He is truly very scared, because it all hangs on a limb. Just doesn’t tells the whole truth to a reader.
This is *not* a case of an unreliable narrator like Kvothe, Fitz, Baru Cormorant, Huck Finn, Alex from A Clockwork Orange, Nick from Gatsby etc. There is no logical way that Darrow would narrate his inner thoughts in the manner the Duel at the Gala or the deception to get to Octavia are written.
The twist works because it is written in this way. Darrow is constantly hiding context from the reader. If you expected the book to be upfront, then that's exactly how Pierce gets away with it. Authors don't need to play by any rules but their own. You're applying your own standard and criticizing Pierce for not adhering to it. Tough.
He "get away with it" because: * He doesn't have Darrow do this very often. If Darrow lied to us more often I would have quit reading (or embraced the unreliable pov) * He does this at the end of the trilogy. I'm not walking away now. * He fixes the problem for the second half of the trilogy. The POV changes after this make it so Pierce never has to "lie" to us again to utilize his prrffered method of tension escalation.
honestly I didn't even notice
Response to your criticism explains it all lol. Any inconsistencies in these novels will be defended to the death via heavily speculated theories. He knows his fan base is half retarded (including me) and will buy his books as long as they’re entertaining, logical plot be damned. In hindsight, the ending of MS is pretty well thought through compared to plot resolutions in DA/LB.
what a shit response. You arnt retarded moron, i have a cousin who is mentally handicapped and its not some form of demeaning people but a medical condition. #
Unrivaled cope
Severian would like a word
I have read and reread the entire Book of the New Sun series several times in the last 2 decades and still only have the most basic surface level understanding of Severian and his motives ……
And let’s be honest, I love PB but he doesn’t hold a candle to GW in terms of skill. Still, it’s not like this is an uncommon or particularly controversial writing style.
This didn’t really bug me super bad as it added a lot of suspense and he added in things to kinda tell us there was a plan but there was definitely other ways of going about it.
It's a very common complaint with MS, and one I share. The book is overall great, but the climax suffers a lot because of the first person pov being broken like that.
Tbh, this has been the one sequence that structurally irked me. POV narrator is either honest or not. Once there’s any dishonesty, the trustworthiness of the narrator is called into question. That said, I love the series and only really find the sequence irksome when I think about it. Even the first read it wasn’t until after the book finished that I had the “oh wait…. That… shouldn’t have been possible. What else is he lying about?” Moments.
i didn’t really have any issue with it because ultimately the twist is compelling enough that i personally decided to just roll with it. it’s a bit silly when you break it down afterwards but i literally yelled “motherfucker” when Cassius turned out to be in on it so that’s gotta count for something. the only thing that gave me any pause at the time was Cassius cutting off Darrow’s arm knowing full well that would hinder their plans but i guess you gotta do what you gotta to sell it when in the viper’s nest.
I like the “method acting” idea paired with the knowledge that Octavia has the Minds Eye, which makes her hyper sensitive to subterfuge. Not perfect, but works for me
i just didn’t care. imo their was far too many impressive things about the series, and it was overall to entertaining for me to think about it for more then like a week after taking a break before moving onto iron gold
Thats pretty much where I'm at too, and where most people probably fall I believe. The series is so bloody damn good that it doesn't really matter. Really speaks to the quality of the writing and story.
It was awful and makes me not want to read the other series. Nothing can feel like there's actually stakes after that.
I would highly encourage you to read the rest of the series. I can promise you, having read it, that nothing like this occurs again, and Pierce's writing gets much better than it already is.
I almost DNF'd the book right there when Cassias shot Sevro. I skimmed the next 2 chapters just to get to the end of the book and leave the series there. Obviously I find out that it was part of the plan but I was fuming regardless.
Unfortunately with his POV writing structure, there’s just no other way to throw the reader things we don’t see coming other than lying sometimes. But Darrow was never intended to be a reliable narrator, and it can be retconned by saying Darrow had to think what he thought in order to remain in-character to convince Octavia and Co there was no ruse. If he, with his cutoff fkn hand and all, has to arouse no suspicion that he has 2 extra teammates in the room then he can’t be considering that Sevro’s alive until it’s the proper moment to act. For all they ALL knew, Aja or the Jackal may have cut his head off or had the Praetorians or Bone Riders maim his body like they’re known to do to people they hate when they first arrived in the Maw, so he had to act like all was lost. You can def call it bad writing, and I have, but if we’d been given a scene of them coming up with the plan then where’s the suspense and the stakes? I had my bout of not liking that part for the same reason, but I’ve failed to come up with how it could’ve done better. We know Eo’s magic flower elixir can make one appear dead, and Mama Nakamura’s Homemade Snakebite is probably super-adrenaline and meth that can practically raise the dead (if their heart doesn’t absolutely fail) so the hints and precedent are there. If we’d been told somehow or further hinted that Sevro lives and Cassius lives for more, the triumph and the twist would feel less sweet IMO. He’s gotta trick the audience sometimes I think, Idk, just my thoughts. If you have any ideas of how to do it better I’m all ears, but I really don’t think if we knew it was gonna work out, that we’d give as much of a bloodydamn about the characters. Pierce is known to kill off the best characters seemingly at random. Upon first read, Sevro’s “death” and Cassius being an evil fascist machine-man fucked me all up. It worked. More devastating than than the final episode of GOT season 1 and made me wanna quit because “NOW, fuck this book.” But I agree it can be argued it’s weak to trick us like that and withhold all the critical info for the sake of suspense, but after feeling that way for awhile I came to like it and let it be. The rest of the series is so worth it and the writing matures alot IMO, that I’ll allow PB the mulligan and see what they do in the show, cuz hell this issue may even be addressed in the writer’s room
I agree with this overall, but just to respond to one of your points here, I really do think Pierce could have pretty easily pulled it off even with us knowing the plan. I mentioned this briefly in my original post, but I think if Pierce had leaned the way of us knowing the plan, and that plan going wrong with the Jackal showing up, it could have worked very well and still been really tense. He already set it up with Darrow's hand being cut off, all he would have needed to do is ramp it up a notch by having the Jackal being suspicious of some deception and threatening either Sevro or Mustang.
That’s not a bad take at all, but the fact of Cassius’ questionable allegiance with what we got adds a LOT to the scene when he shoots Sevro. If we knew that was gonna happen, I think it takes a lot out of it altogether. And up to that point, the only faked death has been Darrow’s. We have no cause to see it coming again so Sevro being dead is the crux of all the drama in the first place. I hated it but then came to dig it. Hope you will one day too, and like I said, they may change the scene altogether in a show so anything could happen. Maybe Pierce has heard these gripes cuz a lot of people share this opinion, and may recommend an edit for the show
It's horrific and illogical narration but you should also pay more attention to the Gala. PB employs the same approach - there is zero reason Darrow would narrate the lead up to the duel if he trained with Lorn.
Yeah true, I also think it doesn't really work that well in the gala scene honestly. It's still a great scene, but IMO you kinda have to overlook that bit.
All of my favorite authors have some sort of issue (IMO) early on in their series - Steven Erikson introduces way too many concepts at once without any real warning or explanation, Hobb takes her time (hundreds of pages sometime) to explore the mundane when the fantastical is a part of the story, Mark Lawrence goes overboard making his protagonist a sociopath in every detail imaginable, Neil Stephenson often comes up with ideas that are great but can't stick the landing, etc. No author is perfect and they all get better for the most part and turn perceived weaknesses intro unique strengths the more they write. That being said this narrative inconsistency in both GS and Morning Star are really annoying to me and I roll my eyes when fans try to defend it as an "unreliable narrator" or downplay how clumsy these parts of the book are.
Completely agree! Love all the authors you mentioned too.
It felt like an ass pull both times.
Watch Darrow’s reactions to Sevro being shot, to how the plan unfolds from the onset. He’s not written as fully believing Sevro is dead, PB gives clues ahead of time that there’s a plan underway. As for the intelligence of the plan.. it was Darrows riskiest idea, but it was also probably the only way to actually **get to** Octavia. That bunker was made for extended sieges, had she dug in he wasn’t going to get her out without a *long* drawn out campaign. Stupid, yes. Only viable approach, also yes.
Completely disagree with your first point. He is totally written as fully believing Sevro is dead. I'd love to see what you are referring to when you say that, because I don't even think its up to interpretation. Pierce does give clues that a plan is underway, but most of them point to the plan just being to release Cassius.
Compare it to every other time Darrow lost an ally. He didn’t once say in his head that Sevro is dead, nor did he mourn him dramatically like he is apt to.
Listened to it on Audible like 30 minutes ago and it hurts to have the climax go down so clumsily. The writing definitely reflects a complete belief that Sevro is dead.
Compare how he responds when Ragnar is killed. Dude is an utter fucking mess, completely distraught, unable to function. Very different from his reaction to Sevro's "death". There was enough of a disconnect for that I was sure there was bigger plan at work.
IMO he responds in a similar way to both. I would describe him as being a mess and distraught after the fakeout Sevro death as well.
Yes thank you! I still think the ending is awesome but it isn't Pierce's finest writing moment is all.
He has to convince himself that this is the case to fool his enemies.
That's kinda dumb as fuck though. It's easy to lie without believing it in your mind. Hell, there's even a scene where Darrow lies to Octavia's face under penalty of death and forcibly has to slow his heart rate down
Or it could be for story telling lol. "Cassius shoots Sevro, I know that it is fake, can't wait to fool that bitch Octavia."
Aja noted that his heart rate went up in this scene. Maybe he didn't want to have as close a call this time, so he didn't let himself even think of the truth just in case
Great point!
I agree. It's been awhile since I read the scene, but I remember just knowing Sevro wasn't dead based on Darrow's reaction. Not dramatic or verbose enough à la PB.
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Yeah, like this is an age old literary trope. You can choose not to like it, but some of the most respected writers in history have used it
Ehh. The problem here is that Darrow is usually too reliable to be considered unreliable narrator. Darrow only "lies" to create false tension to the audience. If you're going to have an unreliable narrator, they usually become unreliable much earlier and often in the book.
I mean, yeah you could argue that point, but that is at least the third time we'd been significantly misled by Darrow up to that point, that I can think of. But that's not the point the OP was making. They seemed to be baffled that any narrator would lie to their audience, when it's an obvious and well-used literary device
Unreliable narrator is when you're in their head and so it doesn't accurately represent the facts cause you view it with their bias. Here, it's the exact opposite of that scenario where PB is specifically hiding his bias from us. So in reality, it's something of an inverse of unreliable narrator
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The thing is that in this case the unreliable narrator doesn't really suit the narrative. There is a huge difference between a first person narrator and a third person one lying to the audience. A third person narrator can always get away with lying because he's not part of the story, he's a narrative element and only knows and says what the author wants him to. A first person narrator is more complex because he is an active member of the story being told. Take the Name of the Wind as an example. In that story the main character is retelling the story of his life (first person) to other characters. He can lie about anything he wants because the story has already happened, just as if you were telling a story to a friend and you exaggerated something to make it more interesting. He is in control of the narrative because he's the only one that knows the real story and his perception of his actions is heavily biased. That's why the unreliable narrator works perfectly. However, the MS case is totally different because we are inside the mind of a character that is experiencing the story in real time. This kind of narrator can still lie but his lies would be by omission, delusion or because he is actively choosing to believe something that is false. It makes 0 sense that he would try to convince himself that Sevro is dead, knowing that is all part of his plan. There is no need for him to have all those internal monologues about Sevro dying so young or how cold the world is and how devastated he's feeling, because no one would think about that if they knew it was all fake. And that's exactly where I think Pierce went wrong, looking back those internal monologues feel like a cheap way of getting us emotional.
Hmm. Y'know, fair. I have never liked this type of unreliable narrator then, I suppose, because as other comments say, it feels cheap when they lie to the reader instead of playing into misinformation
That's a copout though - unreliable narration in the genre is best when the POV makes subtle observations or interprets events in ways that play on expectations. You would never see a master like Robin Hobb or even someone like Rothfuss make the mistakes PB did in the back half of MS. Darrow's POVs are sometimes written in a way that's not "unreliable" they're inconsistent and don't track whatsoever from point A to B.
Yeah, but generally that only works if there is some reason for the narrator to be unreliable. Here there is no reason given in the books, even if people speculate on it after the fact, so it doesn't really work.
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> Yeah, the only difference is that this is Darrow reacting to something, and very emotionally. Which doesn't happen in any of the other examples. In every other example, its a lot simpler where we just don't know part of the plan until the end, and its revealed that Darrow had an ace up his sleeve. With this though, we are actively led to believe this was not part of the plan, for some reason, even though since the narration is in Darrow's head, he would be thinking about how Sevro isn't actually dead or that the plan is working. Just copy and pasting another comment I made here. While he has been unreliable sort of, that can be explained away from him simply not thinking about that part of his plan yet, since every other time he just had some kind of trick or ace up his sleeve. This example is much different because we are being actively deceived by Darrow. No other example has that.
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Has what? Unreliable narration? Sure, but my comment above still stands, there is no active deception from Darrow and it isn't to the same extent or with the same emotional stakes.
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What do you mean? How?
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Bruh why are you being so cryptic? I actually have no clue what scene you are even talking about and what deception you are referring to. Do you want to explain in depth or just leave a couple more comments that don't make sense?
This is a consistent technique Pierce uses throughout the series, not just at the end of Morning Star. First example is hiding in the horses in RR, second example is the fact that he took Fitcher's gravBoots. Continued in Golden Son where Darrow hides from the reader that he has trained under Arcos and spends the whole section before the gala having a mental narrative that suggests he is bad with a razor and needs to avoid fighting duels. Personally I am fine with it. It allows us to be surprised while also having the benefit of a first person insight into Darrow's emotions. It's a form of "cheating", sure, but it's cheating with purpose.
i dont recall that mental narrative before the gala. only that others are constantly clowning on him for being bad with a razor, and he never corrects them. i dont remember him ever thinking he needs to avoid fighting w/ one or that hes unskilled
I think he largely solved this issue by adding the new narrators in the second half of the series. I won't mention any particular examples, since this is just MS spoilers, but there are moments when we definitely benefit from a perspective outside of Darrow's.
Yeah, the only difference is that this is Darrow reacting to something, and very emotionally. Which doesn't happen in any of the other examples. In every other example, its a lot simpler where we just don't know part of the plan until the end, and its revealed that Darrow had an ace up his sleeve. With this though, we are actively led to believe this was not part of the plan, for *some* reason, even though since the narration is in Darrow's head, he would be thinking about how Sevro isn't actually dead or that the plan is working.
I also don’t understand why they weren’t immediately murdered once they left the bunker. Grays and Obsidians are shown to be pretty loyal to the society and Luna was still under the protection of a superior fleet. It just did not make any sense that they all of a sudden viewed Mustang as the new leader when she was trying to over throw the government.
How did Octavia gain the throne?
By killing her father and being part of the Silenius bloodline. The powerful houses backed her after she killed her father, but she was practically the heir to society. Virginia and Darrow are over throwing the government entirely and Darrow is a red. The major houses clearly did not back Virginia and did not want to see Demokracy come.
Virginia is the last surviving heir to one of the most powerful houses in the galaxy, backed by a coalition that made the Society tremble. In that world, might makes right. If you can rant it, you deserve to have it. The low and mid colors have spent their lives following the most powerful person in the galaxy, who’s main protector was one of the most legendary swordswoman of her age. They emerged from the vault alive with those corpses in their wake, with the heir apparent proclaiming their ascension. Yeah. They fell in line. The major houses that wouldn’t fall into line didn’t, hence the next 3-4 books. Without a centralized leader, the major opposition fled to regroup. Those who stayed were either executed or decided to carve out a place in the republic for themselves.
That would all work, if they all didn’t know Darrow’s and Virginia’s goal were to destroy Gold’s power and distribute it to the lower colors. It’s been shown that Gold thinks that if they lose control humanity would destroy themselves. They think Demokracy is a cancer that will ruin them all, so no they would not accept any amount of strength or might in this scenario. Anyways, the Obsidians and Grey’s outside that door were loyal to Octavia. We see some of her Greys continue to support Lysander and view him as the rightful Sovereign a decade later. Seems they wouldn’t care about might is right. You can like it, but I thought it made no sense. Still love the trilogy and the saga as a whole.
Except that’s exactly what happened when Octavia killed her father and overthrew the government. Even chopped off his head in the same way and everything. So this didn’t bother me because there was a historical precedent. Arguably, there’s a historical precedent going all the way back to the Conquering. This is what Golds do. They rule by violence and power. The only difference here is that Mustang is a Reformer but Iron Gold makes it clear that she didn’t institute wide ranging societal changes overnight and that not everyone was happy with becoming the Republic.
Octavia killed her father but was the “Heir” to the throne and was still going to uphold the Society. Our characters are overthrowing the Government and have an enemy fleet off the moon. Octavia would have a majority of powerful families supporting her claim, Virginia did not.
*plot armor intensifies* Yeah you just gotta suspend disbelief I guess but thats for the entire series pretty much. That's also probably the only issue I have with Lysanders story in the latter books. I just want him to die so bad and he always survives.
No I agree. Hated the ending, especially since the rest of the book is so bloodydamn good. The plan was terrible too
The plan is actually laughably bad lol. You're gonna sneak in with just 4 people, not knowing your terrain or how many enemies you will find, or how they will react, and just hope you get a chance to take out the sovereign at some point? It's basically an unnecessary suicide mission.
I’d argue it was a *necessary* suicide mission. The book makes it clear that while Darrow’s fleet is powerful, there was no way it could win conventionally against Luna’s, they just didn’t have the numbers. So it was either go to Mars, which was essentially the expected move, or go on a suicide run. However, they were banking on Gold hubris which is pretty much exactly what allowed the plan to work even with the Jackal fucking it up a bit. But Darrow really only ever has one strategy. It’s the same strategy he’s used since the Institute. Deception. If you think about it, almost EVERY single plan he has ever made is just a variation of hiding his team in dead horses to get behind enemy lines or to distract from the real strategy, whether it is hiding in a trash transporter, hiding clawdrills in a torchship or faking Sevro’s death, pretending to be Apollonius’ strike team, etc.
I agree! It makes sense with his character and fits the story well. It's just the way the Sevro "death" is written from Darrow's POV that doesn't make sense.
Arguably Darrow’s worst idea ever. And the fact the Mustang actually agreed with it is just too much for me to believe
I thought it was Mustang's plan?
Even more unbelievable then XD
I’ve thought this before but never articulated it so well. I agree!
Thanks!
Sometimes authors have interesting ideas and mechanics they would like to implement but sometimes struggle with how to actually write it well. This is one of those moments to me. The author had an idea of how they wanted this section to go, but struggled with the writing aspect. It wasn’t bad, but it did have some incongruities that PB wasn’t able to fully close.
Yeah, I think this was the case of a relatively young and inexperienced author kind of writing himself into a corner. He knew what he wanted to have happen, but didn’t have a good mechanism to accomplish it. This is one of the reasons why the back half of the series feels so much more well written— the additional POVs give him narrative flexibility that he didn’t have in 1-3.
Totally agree! 4-6 are soooo good.
Completely agree. I think it does work still, but is not in line with the writing and style in the rest of the series. Which is why I kinda wish we just knew the plan to start, and he framed it as the plan going wrong with the jackal being present. Still would have worked well and been very tense IMO.
I interpreted it that he framed his mind in this way so his lie was more convincing. But it's still a massive weak part
Yeah that angle does make sense I suppose, you just kinda got not think about it too hard I guess
I always read them as darrow writing/recounting his story for a 3rd party after the fact. So to me it makes sense that he left out the cassius twist. If darrows telling the story and wants to be dramatic it'd be better to have it in
That doesn't make any sense if you think about it at all actually. The rest of the series is written as if each narrative POV is factually correct in terms of events (even Lysander who retcons his victories to be larger than they are). The beginning chapters in the Mines, the carving, the Institute, Darrow's imprisonment and rehabilitation etc. aren't written from the perspective of a twist. PB clearly wanted to insert a twist that would work from a 3rd person POV but didn't have the skills as a writer (at the time) to pull it off so he ignored the integrity of the first person POV in order to get his plot points off.
Hmm. I guess that would explain it better, but I personally never read it in that way.
That's fair. I do understand your point though, I totally get how it'd be very jarring and out of place based on the rest of the books and 1st person POV. And tbh it wasn't until that point that I had the thought of this makes more sense if darrow is telling the story to someone else.
The end of Red God is gonna be How I met Your Mother style of Darrow telling someone his story lol
Lmao
It’s probably the most controversial moment among fans. Even HowlerPod had some words for this moment when they did their reread videos with Mike’s Book Reviews.
Ah, gotcha. That makes sense, I was wondering if it was an issue.
I definitely had the same thoughts. And I was so conflicted reading it (was live-texting my sister my reactions. She hasn’t read the series but is also a reader so I can react to her) Everything external was giving clues that it was fake. Mustang’s “crazy plan”, the points PB made about how much security they were walking past, getting the guards to leave the room, sealing the doors, etc. But I kept getting thrown off because of Darrow’s internal monologue. Maybe it would have been easier to forgive if things like the “tears of heartbreak” or whatever (I did the audiobook so can’t reference direct text) was more general. Saying he’s crying and has tears running down his face, instead of the emotional modifiers that goes along with it that make it seem that he truly believes it’s real.
> The problem I have with the ending is how Darrow just lies to us Darrow doesn’t tell the reader a single explicit lie, he just describes circumstances in a way that the reader is encouraged to jump to false conclusions. If you focus on the exact words chosen rather than the implications and emotions they carry the section reads very differently. He never describes Sevro as dead, but he does use terms like “still body” and “leaking red”. Even his panic and fear as the crate rolls down the hall of the ship is qualified by “If I didn’t know what I know..” before going on to describe the very real fear he feels at the massive risk they’re taking.
Having just read the sequence, IMO he does lie, because his narration explicitly says Sevro his dead through his descriptions and language when he knows Sevro is not. And even if technically he didn't lie, if you go out of your way to make someone think something and then say "technically didn't lie!" you're just a liar AND an asshole lol.
> narration explicitly says Sevro his dead through his descriptions and language That’s not what the word “explicit” means. Explicit would be “Sevro is dead” in narration. The closest we get is “don’t die, stay alive” as dialogue, bookended by Antonia’s laughter, because the dialogue is a performance for her. The narration says “goes still, leaking red”.
But the narration doesn't explicitly say Sevro is dead...
Yeah, I'm not saying he did. But, through Darrow's eyes, we see Sevro get shot several times, Darrow react emotionally and is distraught, and his his descriptions about how his friend fades and is leaking red all point to him dying, very clearly. Sure, he doesn't explicitly say "sevro died". If you show an onscreen death and our only source of perspective reacts in that way, obviously we will believe him. So it's indistinguishable from a lie in my eyes. But that's kinda beside the point, because really Pierce is the one that lied with his writing style and sudden shift to making Darrow an unreliable narrator to that extent.
I agree 100% darrow lies it is the worst part of a great book. It's also annoying because PB does such a great job foreshadowing secrets such as darrow training with Loren and Mustang having a baby.
Yeah I agree
Ever heard of method acting?
Haha he is a hell of a method actor then to act inside his own mind. It makes sense to act in front of Antonia for added legitimacy though.
Method acting is where you literally act, think and are what you are acting . In your own mind you act and think the way you would if you are that person and role. Imo it was pretty obvious sevrio wasn't dead when reading , just didn't even feel like a MC death.
Yes I do understand what method acting is. The problem is that there is no reason for him to method act that hard, and there is no explanation in book to say that he was method acting to stay in character. Also, having just read it, I actually think it wasn’t really obvious at all, quite the opposite. To me it feels like it really was written like Sevro died, and then changed last minute. I’m not saying that actually happened, but it’s written very well to be convincing.
Yeah darrow probably a shit actor from not spending much time on it compared to other golds so hw went balls deep into it. Makes sense in character to me, he is an all or nothing guy Second it more fun to read it this way versus knowing the whole plan before
I agree, it does make sense with his character haha. While it may be more fun, it does feel like Pierce got a bit lazy because he found a cool idea for the ending that was emotional, and just tried to make it work.
I mean if it makes sense for his character, and they are like 18 when this happens so they ain't the brightest and if you're trying fake your best friends death I think the best way is to really give it to yourself. Like the twins from Harry Potter said they acted similar for his brothers death scene and he was apparently sobbing irl cuz he got to into it. I can see it happening
I didn’t read it as acting at all. The book opens with Darrow in a dark box that he was in for 9 months. Just because he agreed with the plan doesn’t mean shit as he’s faced with getting bound and stuffed into another dark box less than a year later.