Iron Gold

By: Pierce Brown

Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds, John Curless, Julian Elfer, Aedin Moloney

Length: 23 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Honor and betrayal fuel a caste-shattering revolution in the action-packed new novel from the number one New York Times best-selling author of the Red Rising Trilogy.

Ten years after the events of Morning Star, Darrow and the Rising are battling the remaining Gold loyalist forces and are closer than ever to abolishing the color-coded caste system of Society for good. But new foes will emerge from the shadows to threaten the imperfect victory Darrow and his friends have earned. Pierce Brown expands the size and scope of his impressive Red Rising universe with new characters, enemies, and conflicts among the stars.

©2017 Pierce Brown (P)2017 Recorded Books

I agree to many Cooks in kitchen..

One of the many reasons that I loved the first three books so much was that Tim Gerard Was absolutely perfect as the narrator. He ability to change back and forth from High lingo to low red. Giving each character its own identity made this book come alive. He did that on his own. The other actors here just ruined it for me. Excellent story as always from Pierce Brown. But as far as the narration goes maybe they should make sure that the actors know how pronounce the names as the author intended. I swear I was going get bloody damned pissed if he called Rouqe “Rock” one more time

War eats the victors last.

Iron Gold, the latest in the Red Rising series, shows us how the rebellion that was detailed in Morning Star has ushered in a new age of peace and harmony for mankind. Ya right, what kind of book would that make? In truth, the war is far from over and establishing a new Republic is a lot harder than just disposing of the old leaders. The old color based society system is not just going to change overnight to accept everyone as equal and the newly formed Republic finds that the challenges of achieving peace can be more difficult to overcome than an all out war.

That being said, the war is not over and the both the Ashlord and the Rim present very real threats to the new Republic. These threats are elevated by the fact that the new government already has its hands full dealing with issues from within. All of the main characters are back with Darrow, Sevro, Mustang, and Cassius all front and center alongside some interesting new PoV characters that enter the story. Lyria is a red who was liberated from slavery on Mars only to find that the new world offered by the Republic is not better than the old one. Just another forgotten refugee, she struggles to find happiness in a world of chaos that she is ill prepared to understand. Ephraim is a grey who has made a living as a master thief and built up a reputation as someone who gets the job done at any cost. He too suffers from the rebellion as he gets caught up in the machinations of the many factions vying for power.

These new characters blend nicely with the old to create a compelling story line that moves along nicely from start to finish. I felt that the series was in a good place after the opening trilogy was complete and was worried that this new book would feel out of place, but it certainly doesn't. This continuation of the story is solid and since the main characters are older now we see them struggle with the realities of the world which clash against the ideals from their youth. If you enjoyed the first three books then do not hesitate to pick this one one.

Tim Gerard Reynolds is back at the mic but this time he is not alone. Normally I don't mind ensemble cast of narrators, but TGR is so talented that it is tough to have to listen to someone else when the story shifts narrators. The new narrators each voice a new PoV character for the story with John Curless doing a good job with Ephraim, Aedin Moloney also doing well as Lyria, and the weakest of the bunch, Julian Elfer voicing Lysander. Julian is clearly talented, but his reading was at a faster pace than the other narrators so I found it to be the least enjoyable of the bunch.

Still, a worthy listen in total.

good, except the narrations

poor post editing with inconsistent volume meant sometimes I was straining to hear narrators, while other times I could hear fine. the narrator for Lysander also spoke without pause which I felt sometimes detracted fron the content.

story itself is good.

Just not as good as the other books...

Would you consider the audio edition of Iron Gold to be better than the print version?

What was one of the most memorable moments of Iron Gold?

The story of Lyria of Lagalos really just needs to be deleted. Part because it adds no real value to the overall story and part because the narration is horrible. I finally got to the point were i just fast-forwarded her chapters. Didn't end up missing a thing and saved myself having to listen to that whiny high pitched voice.

What three words best describe the narrators’s voice?

Lyria of Lagalos narrator - Whiny, high pitched, awful.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Some sequels are just best left unwritten.

Horrible narration

The narration was very hard to follow as the volume varied tremendously. At times I would have the volume at max in my car and could barely hear then I’d have to quickly turn it down to half a second later.

Disappointing but not without hope.

The Story, so it takes place a decade after the events of morning star. As usual after a revolution the society is in chaos. Many victories and defeats have happened. The whole thing seems to be hanging on a thread. The worst part is this entire book is that thread fraying further and further. Death begets death begets death starts to show the effects on everyone. You can't help but dislike almost everyone in this book, pity them and even get angry with them. It is chaos and once you think there is a clear path a wrench gets thrown into the gear.

I want to like the book more than I actually do. This book doesn't stand well on its own and to me would only be fair to judge based on the following books in the series. we will see. All the previous books had ups and downs, this was entirely down and always had the feeling of something is terribly wrong. maybe that's the point. maybe the rollercoaster ride that Mr. Brown usually puts us on in each and every book will instead span the next few books. It left me feeling drained and disappointed, I hope the next one has something more positive, uplifting and exciting. if the dread and sadness is intended then this book was spectacular. based on previous books I have faith in a turnaround

Narrators - Audio - Story - Voice

I don't normally write reviews here, but I'm compelled in this case.

NARRATORS
There are four Point of View (POV) characters and four narrators, once for each POV character. Tim Gerard Reynolds (TGR) narrated all three of the original books in their entirety. Each of those books only had one POV character. In Iron Gold, three of the four narrators deliver powerful performances, but the narrator for the POV character named "Lysander" failed big time, imo.

Lysander's narrator delivers a flat, emotionless, and frankly, kinda boring performance. I get that might have been his interpretation of Lysander's written voice, but it didn't resonate with me at all.

AUDIO - Brown, did you listen before this was published?!
Who produced / engineered this final product? They failed hard. The audio levels were not equalized and are all over the place. This takes you out of the story when some sections are so low that you can barely hear them, combined with really loud sections, and the relative levels between narrators being nowhere near each other. Ouch. This was really poorly done.

STORY
This is the first book in the series that Brown writes chapters from different Points of View (POV). The new POV characters were not present in the first series, so Brown sets up these characters. Unfortunately all of this setup essentially happens at the same time in the beginning of the book causing an extremely slow start ... I don't mind slow starts, but this wasn't a particularly good slow start as it felt too obvious what Brown was trying to accomplish.

Once you get past all of the set up, the plot is moved forward a tiny bit, from a starting point ten years after the first trilogy ended. I really enjoyed in the last third of this book. But the first two thirds were a bit of a grind.

VOICE
It felt a little too much like, "hey, look at how good of a writer I am" in certain spots. Brown, we know you're a badass. We don't really need these flowery "writer treat" sections. You write kickass characters and storylines. I don't think we're here for fancy prose, I mean, this isn't a Rothfuss novel where we expect two paragraphs of genius poetry to describe the sound a plank of wood makes when you step on it xD

Lysander ... Lysander's voice is the weak link here, Brown, and I recall you saying you struggled to find it. I don't know if you found it, or if what you found is particularly good. Or, perhaps, the narrator just utterly botched it (which I think he did).

OVERALL
Overall this book is going to get good reviews because of how much we all loved the first trilogy and how much we were all anticipating this book and the next two. But if the next installment isn't a marked improvement over this one then I think we might start seeing people jump ship. Don't worry about being impressive, brother! Just tell those badass stories you have in your head : )

It should be LAW, that new narrators are required to listen to the previous books....

I will start off with the positive, as always, Pierce Brown wrote an amazing story! I went back and listened to all of the originals before I dove into this one, and it flowed well. I’m looking forward to the next (final?)!

Now, for the narration. As always, TGR did an outstanding job, he is the voice of this story! I was not a fan of the other narrators introduced in this book. It was too confusing with their mispronunciation of most things solidified by TGR. It should be LAW that all new narrators to a story are REQUIRED to listen to all previous narrations in a series for fluidity.

I didn’t ultimately come around to understanding and enjoying the story, but at first it almost ruined the books for me. I appreciate the effort they put into the production and they’re work is appreciated, but it would have been appreciated if they followed suit.

Thanks to Mr. Brown and the narrators for continuing the Red Rising story!

audio

love the story but spotty audio and some narrators voices are hard to listen to

Too many narrators

Tim was awesome as the sole narrator for the first three!! Please have him as the sole narrator for the next book!