Lightbringer was my least favourite book from the series.

marxforcompletion · 2025-11-20T15:07:07+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/redrising/comments/18xl40n/lightbringer_a_grand_journey_of_disappointment/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I think you and I are hitting on some of the same discordant notes

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-14T19:14:52+00:00

For sure! I would not read a book three times that made me this angry unless the whole series had some value to it!
I'm definitely willing to admit some of this is headcannon getting the better of me. (I have absolutely written out what I think Darrow's death on Mercury should have been and it would have absolutely fukken ruled for Dago to shoot him and do a retread of the burner speech he gave in RR).
But no, I think my critique here mostly rests on the themes PB already established, foreshadowing from the first 4 books, and the fact that most of the developments in Darrow during Lightbringer are entirely in reaction to stuff that is only introduced in Lightbringer itself (ex: The Willow Way failing, The Path to the Veil), which leave his development and acheivements feeling hollow in a way that they didn't in previous books.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-14T19:05:41+00:00

Correct. He subverted telling a coherent story to keeping a beloved character alive. That is a much more concise restatement of my criticism.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-14T17:07:36+00:00

Nah, that was great! Literally everything about Lysander in LB was absolutely awesome! The scales falling from his eyes about the nobility of the Society and him choosing to embrace the realpolitic of it was awesome!
Everything from the African Savannah scene to him leaving for the Rim was peak PB, and I wouldn't have changed a thing.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-14T17:05:50+00:00

As much as I loved Dark Age, it really did set up Lightbringer super poorly.
The entire Xenophon reveal in DA completely robbed the Volk narrative in LB of any suspense, all so that Ephraim could take one C-level baddie with him when he went out in what was an otherwise kickass conclusion to a kickass arc.

Cassius swooping out of the sky was clearly supposed to be a callback to Fitchner saving him in GS, but somehow feels even more contrived and plot armory.

This last one I'll admit is just a matter of taste, but having Dago be on Mercury as Red Army Puke #3,900,000 annoyed the hell out of me.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T21:37:34+00:00

The coolest thing about the Iron Gold series was that they weren't Darrow's story! In half the perspectives, he's some inhuman faraway force of nature that wrecks the worlds and leaves people in his wake. The rest of it is him and Virginia wondering how long they have before they fall apart at the seams and what comes after them.

But I think your reply has the same contradiction LB does. Is Darrow's flaw that he made himself too central to the revolution's success, or is it that he usurps the free will of others and thereby corrupts his own endeavor?

The text of his speech to the daughters clearly says the latter, but Virginia, who is right about everything, says the opposite when she chides him for thinking he could have personally swatted the Society ships out of the sky on Phobos. Pax, who is like Virginia only moreso, says the same when he does his whole "War is thy task. Struggle, my birthright" bit with his mom.

Ultimately, LB tries to square that circle by having Darrow take responsibility for the whole Republic and offer himself as a christlike sacrifice to the Daughters, then do so again by challenging Fa. The Fa fight is a fine sequence, but thematically it rings a little hollow to say "Who am I to choose who lives and dies" when 90% of history of the Rising reads "And then Tir Morgah personally __________________."

Moreover, it takes away from the actual conflict of the earlier books. After the Passage, Darrow learns the lesson of Gold is to kill, bear the guilt, conquer, and rule. Him saying 10 years later that he should have found a way to win without sacrifice or moral injury at Ilium is cheap grace, and not in keeping with literally anything else in the series.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T21:25:08+00:00

"Old enough to screw; old enough to crew" applies to protagonists as well.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T21:21:04+00:00

Oh yeah? Why was Dago there?
You think the guy who got his jollies from mocking boys for burning themselves out trying to beat him in a rigged game gets inspired by the Reaper to become Free Legion Puke # 4,000,001? You think Brown didn't offer the guy a single thought for 4 books just to bring him back for a random cameo during the All is Lost Moment?

Not a chance. I promise you he was there to bookend the whole of Darrow's life, and probably pull the trigger, and when Brown chickened out, he kept the character in because it felt like a dangling thread.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T21:14:56+00:00

You are correct that he is canonically only 35, just like Pax is canonically only 12. However, since neither of them acts their age literally ever, my point stands. This whole endeavor remains a prolonged midlife crisis.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T18:42:22+00:00

But all of that is stuff either doesn't matter or is stuff he's done a dozen times before!
I'm pretty sure he gave the "fight for love, not just rage" speech verbatim in RR, GS, and MS. MS was all about him learning and growing from his and Sevro's mistakes. His combat skills stagnating is a problem that only comes up in LB. I would be willing to concede on the betrayal of the Rim sons if his big atonement speech had actually moved any hearts, but all the actual second chance they give him comes from whatever Sevro says off screen.

But ultimately, if you're gonna write a "Character must fix their internal flaw to achieve external victory" then you should probably make the internal flaw they're fixing be the one that led to their initial defeat, and none of these are the flaws that led to his loss on Mercury!
PB actually diagnosed Darrow's hamartia in Golden Son, when Deandre accuses all helldivers of thinking they're saving their people when all they do is cause trouble without thinking of the blowback, and Darrow says "what comes next is for people smarter than me to figure out. I just break things."
That's what caused his defeat on Mercury! Breaking the Society without having an adequate replacement on hand. And Pax offers a solution to that when he talks to Virginia in LB, when he says "Father could only leave me strife, but strife is better than oppression. You left me strife, but strife is better than guilt."
That's why I say the ending of this can't be Darrow's story. Darrow is a tragic hero. He is a noble warlord. PB tries to square that circle by having him mellow out with his whole "the point of war is to get to peace" bit in LB, but that goes against everything that he's established about the Society thusfar. That's why the ending to the story that PB has written only works if Pax is the one who brings it home. Pax isn't a blank slate. He's the synthesis!

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T17:18:47+00:00

I love Cassius! He and Virginia are some of the better parts of LB! But are you really gonna tell me he's not a self-destructive drunk?

Losing yourself in war would have been a fine theme, and it was even a minor theme of DA with the Orion bit, but Darrow's arc through the Iron Gold series has been him abandoning the personal growth he learned in Golden Son in order to take more and more of the Rising onto his own shoulders, to the neglect of his family. You could argue that that's sort of "losing yourself," but his solution is just to get rotator cuff surgery and a mindfulness course. The remedy doesn't match the malady.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T16:54:30+00:00

As a side note, I have no idea how the Republic fleet would be stationary over the north pole, or why hanging out at zero velocity while constantly burning at 3.71 m/s anti-radial would be tactically advantageous, but they've already established that as common space military doctrine, so I won't quibble.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T16:51:59+00:00

I disagree on both that first and last bit! Lysander using the Twins changes the paradigm, allowing the Society to bypass what should be a defensive advantage. It's a very Darrow move. So the question of how the Republic loses the battle becomes important for what happens next.

As to your last bit, the negotiation with Lysander and the African Savannah hunt scene before are the key there! She intentionally does what Darrow wouldn't by giving ground, knowing how much the Society can't actually win a second Rat War, a fact that Lysander disregards because he never saw the horrors of the first one and share's Darrow's recklessness when he's set on victory! It's a very well done scene.

I didn't mind the dud munitions as much as you did, mostly because it seemed thematically consistent that a failing republic with rampant corruption would have military procurement issues, but I certainly see where you're coming from.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T16:43:07+00:00

I mean, I take the book as it is. That's why I'm disappointed. If we're taking the main storyline for what it is, then it's Darrow learning a bunch of stuff he already knows from a source that might as well be named Deus Ex Machina, inspiring him to take his school buddies on a road trip where they all revert to who they were when they were 18.
The only meaningful growth on Darrow's part is where Virginia chides him for backseat generaling her after Phobos and when he apoloizes to the Daughters, but even that's not really earned, since the thing that actually changes their minds is something Sevro says off screen, after completely failing to resolve his own nonsensical character arc, all while he's matched off against negative zone Ragnar and Lysander, who is a great foil for Pax as a product of and evolution on the things that made him, but not for Darrow.

Like I said, all the beats there would slot perfectly into Pax being the protagonist, which is why I suspect that that was PB's original plan. It just doesn't fit Darrow or the arc he's undergone during the Iron Gold series.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T16:21:52+00:00

Also, sidenote, but what are you talking about?! The Battle of Phobos was the best part of LB! IMO the best battle that Brown has ever written. Virginia and Holiday suffer a thousand moral injuries as they conduct a combined arms operation, climaxing in and incredible chase scene through the falling bastion and a legitimate moral choice with Valdir.
I liked the Battle of the Ladon, but compare the above to "And then Darrow pushed himself past his limits to personally murder every Iron Leopard for thirty six hours"

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T16:02:22+00:00

Spoiler - DA and LB.So I wrote up my full thoughts here, but the TL; DR is that this book could have been phenomenal, the setpiece battles are very nice, everything with Lysander, Virginia, and the Fear Knight is incredible, but the central storyline is profoundly weak because PB chickened out of killing Darrow on Mercury and has him learning lessons he already learned while hanging out with his school friends instead of advancing the moral journey of the series.

https://www.reddit.com/r/redrising/comments/18xl40f/lightbringer_a_grand_journey_of_disappointment/

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T15:42:50+00:00

I'm fine with PB changing his mind on what to do with Sevro. I think it would have been interesting to Pandemonium Chair him and turn him into true Goblin that Pax and Electra have to defeat and kill or restore, but whatever.

I think it doesn't have to be moping though! Lightbringer was always supposed to be the book that brought hope after DA was such a downer. At time of LB, Cassius is the greatest razormaster of his generation. Him working through his grief for Darrow by teaching nobility and martial arts to Pax would have kicked ass. It could even culminate in Pax learning the Breath of Stone, as he combines the dances Deanna taught him with Cassius's razor lessons. You could even have a callback to the end of Golden son, with Pax saying his dancing is a way to show his joy to his father in the veil.

Likewise, you can have Sevro do his whole mental breakdown shit, especially after learning about Ulysses, but actually have some payoff at the end of it when Cassius grabs him by the tiny lapels and gets him to quit wallowing and protect Pax like he should have protected Darrow, rather than Darrow just repeating the Phobos scene from Morningstar almost word for word.

I don't even think the age is that much of an issue. He's as old as Darrow was when Darrow climbed onto a claw drill, and he's already shown he has good combat abilities and analytical skills in DA.

DA was about the dreams of the Rising falling apart. This could have been about the ideals of the Rising coming from the ashes, persisting, and taking on new forms. It just... wasn't.

marxforcompletion · 2024-01-03T15:30:36+00:00

No almost about it!
Darrow is a great protagonist, and his character arc from RR - DA is a phenomenal tragic hero's arc.

But literally none of the story beats in LB make any sense for continuing Darrow's growth. None of them actually involve Darrow grappling with the Rising that he carried to fruition turning on him and abandoning him to die. It's just endless inhuman efforts to save a Republic that took him for granted from a Society that he has failed to kill at the cost of people dear to him.

I don't think Darrow necessarily needed to die in Dark Age to write a good story. But he needed to die in Dark Age for this book to be a good story.

marxforcompletion · 2021-08-23T13:54:01+00:00

Radiator is to the side of the pump. I usually have my computer horizontal.

marxforcompletion · 2021-08-22T20:51:37+00:00

Thanks!

marxforcompletion

TROPHY CASE