Iron Gold

By: Pierce Brown

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

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

Too many narrators Mr. Brown

What made the experience of listening to Iron Gold the most enjoyable?

Tim Gerald Reynolds is a master narrator. Reynolds has already developed the voices for these characters in 3 other books. Adding the other narrators takes away from TGR performance and the Red Rising experience. It does not flow effortlessly like the other books and gets confusing. Missed the mark as far as the audible version is concerned.

Meh

I absolutely loved the first three books but this was a little lackluster for me. It introduced three new point of view characters with three different narrators, which in concept was a good way to expand the scope of the story but wasn’t executed very well. I honestly didn’t care enough about the new characters for their storylines to hold my attention, save for one. Even Darrow’s chapters were so far removed from the man he was that I didn’t enjoy them. The writing is still beautiful and the world building is still there, but this felt more like the first in a new series in a new time and place than a continuation of the previous. Even then, not much progress was made and it just felt like it was setting up future novels. That is fine for a first book, but not a fourth. I give it a meh and an ehhh.

Love Red Rising... but Julian Elfer?

[Semi-Spoilers]
Pierce Brown is writing one hell of a series and I’m enjoying every minute. I have also listened to TGR on several other of his narrations and absolutely love his performance.

The only scar on this performance is the narrator who voiced Lysander, . He’s got a great voice but... there’s no emotion... He’s reading about the death of one of the major characters of this series and it’s like I’m listening to a BBC news anchor drawl on about the London Stock Exchange numbers!

TGR is amazing, Aedin Moloney stirred so much emotion, John Curless really made me feel Ephraim’s grittiness, but PLEASE replace Julian Elfer from the series (assuming there’s no contract for all 3 books I suppose).

Thanks for a great story.

Great book, one narrator almost ruined.

Excellent next chapter in the series, liked it as much as any of the others. I liked how the threads of last three were retained with lots of new characters introduced, and lots of future conflicts set up.

One smallish complaint. The Actress who narrated Lyria showed a range of a emotion in her reading. On a scale of 1 to 10 that range was somewhere between 9.8 and 10 the entire time. She even read the chapter titles with over the top emotion. Honestly it made me dread Lyria chapters by the end of the book.

Still, five stars for this book.

Poor narration choices

Iron Gold is another excellent story within the Red Rising saga. The only thing disappointing was the decision to move away from Tim Gerard Reynolds as the sole narrator. I gave three stars for Performance, but that is an average of 5 stars for the TGR bits and 1 star for the others. Not only were the additional narrators an unnecessary distraction (really we need 4?!?!), but some of the others are unable to keep reasonably consistent delivery volume. The one that reads the Efron parts is really miserable in this regard. I would have to turn the volume up so loud to hear him when he mumbles that I would then blow my eardrums out when he reverts to normal volume. Rather than getting the audiobook, consider reading.

Story decently good but narration very mixed

I enjoyed the story though it didn't seem quite up to the high standards set by the Red Rising. Where the Red Rising was by its format much tighter in scope and focus, the multiple plotlines here made this story a bit harder to keep track of. The characters were also harder to become fond of when you're jumping in between.

In particular I had a hard time with the narrators of Lyria and Lysander. Near the beginning of the book, Lyria's hard circumstances caused the narrator to similarly sound strained and teary. But the constant barrage of wailing whenever her character came up sounded just grating especially when there was almost no time before then to get us to like the character first. Later on however this got much better. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Lysander's narrator was mostly emotionalless and seemed to join words together oddly or not have pauses where required to make a sentence function. Darrow's and Ephraim's narrators were excellent throughout.

Overall I did enjoy this book. I really liked how different the stories were for each character and how different their tones were. Now that there has been some setting up for the characters, I look forward to the sequels. I just hope the narration benefits from the experience from this book.

Brilliant continuation

{No Spoilers Contained} I normally don't write reviews, but I felt compelled to express my satisfaction with this book; especially in the face of many negative reviews that I had seen prior to my purchase.

When this book first came out, I was hesitant to pick it up because I thought that the author had said all that needs to be said in the first 3 books and anything more would just be overkill. Plus, I was turned off to the book because of so many of the negative reviews regarding the narration. Hindsight being what it is, I could kick myself for waiting this long to read this book.

First lets discuss the narration. It was fine. Were there more than one voice narrating. YES. Was that a problem for me. NO. In fact, I think it was a brilliant way to introduce the new characters and their unique points of view. Tim Gerard Reynolds will always be the voice of Darrow and the first 3 books are written from Darrow's point of view. But this book is not written that way. Since this book speaks from multiple points of view, (some of which are drastically different from Darrow's own voice) it was very clever how those voices were represented in the audiobook by additional narrators.

Secondly, the author did a great job of world building. I was wrong to think that the trials and tribulations depicted in the first 3 books were complete and that there was nothing more to build upon. The author has built a very believable and ever-expanding universe that continues to tell a very vibrant, compelling story. I can not wait until the next installment!!

Fantastic Story. Interesting Production.

This is the first Red Rising audiobook that isn’t five stars across the board for me, and it almost entirely comes down to the performance of the narrator for Lysander au Lune. He has a beautiful voice, and one that seems extremely appropriate for his character, but his performance makes it very difficult to distinguish between different characters, narration, or Lysander’s own thoughts. There are times where entire paragraphs seem little more than one rambling stream of consciousness - it’s extremely difficult to follow, and I say that as someone who has already read the book.

That being said, there’s also some questionable audio mixing throughout the entire book. Some sentences are so quiet I struggle to hear them at full volume, and other times it seems like I risk blowing out my speakers. Given the wonderful performances of most of the narrators and the strength of the story I still find myself recommending the audiobook overall, but it’s disappointing to see this trilogy starting off on such a weak note after the phenomenal productions of the first trilogy of books in the saga.

A bit disappointing

Some narrators were difficult to hear in the car.
Ending had too many loose threads.

Great story, great narrators, piss-poor sound edit

I had incredibly mixed feelings about this book. The Red Rising trilogy is one of my favorite series, not in small part to the PERFECT ending. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the fourth addition. It was the perfect amount of "story set in the same universe" and "continuation of the previous books."

My only complaint is the absolutely piss-poor sound editing. Portions of the book are blaring, while others are so quiet I can't understand the narrator no matter how high I turn the volume. The inconsistencies are not only between narrators (there are four of them), but also within same chapters of the same narrator.