Show notes
Golden Son (the second book in the Red Rising trilogy) opens with a time skip, a defeat, and Darrow’s patron cutting him loose. Everything he built at the Institute is gone, and the Sons of Ares want him to become a terrorist. Full spoilers for Red Rising and Golden Son.
Alex and Lindsey get into Ragnar, and the scene where freedom is offered to him and he experiences it as an insult rather than a gift. They argue that changing sides costs him far more than it costs any Gold. They also work through Darrow’s own prejudice against the Golds he holds at arm’s length, whether Roque’s betrayal was always coming or something Darrow caused, and Fitchner’s claim about which color has to lead a rebellion for it to free everybody. Plus the irony that the Golds turn out to be the most aimless and pleasure-seeking of all the colors, in a system Augustus defends on the grounds that it prevents exactly that.
Then Darrow goes home, and his mother says something about Eo that neither of them expected to hear out loud. It’s where both cry counts came from.
Also: a scoreboard on last book’s predictions, including one theory that turns out to be spectacularly wrong, and two people with real complaints about the pacing who still want the next book.
Cry count and ratings at the end.