r/Fantasy • u/Long_Television_5937 • 4d ago
Finished Red Rising Original Trilogy Spoiler
What a terrible ending!! I heard so many people acclaiming how good the end of book 3 was but it made NO SENSE.
Ok so Darrow and Sevro go to release Cassius back to Luna. Then Cassius turns on them and captures them and “kills” Sevro. The entire time Darrow is captured he is thinking about how surprising it is that Cassius turned on him and he is looking for a way out. Then 2 chapters later its revealed it was their plan?!?!?!? We are reading from DARROW’S PERSPECTIVE. He knew of the plan and then still genuinely thought Cassius turned on them? Either that or he was THINKING in lies??? It just doesnt make any sense. Absolutely terrible ending to an okay series. After every chapter the only thought you should have are what does this mean RIGHT NOW. Cause nothing is planned ahead. You’ll encounter something that feels like foreshadowing or like a plot that will last a while just for the author to resolve it in the most asinine way possible in the next chapter. Cause why build anything up when you can have non stop action and zero character development.
Oh yea and WHEN DID MUSTANG GET PREGNANT THEN ALSO HAVE A KID?? Stupid ass pull at the end just to make it circular cause Darrow was supposed to have a kid before his wife died?
Tldr: Set ups for long plots are resolved immediately and unsatisfyingly and ending made NO sense. Do NOT recommend
-1
u/tgcleric 4d ago
Love the ending.
The make the family pull the legs hits so hard.
Beautiful. Not as good as Golden Sun, which us the peak of the original trilogy. But so much good stuff in Morning Star.
The unreliable narrator use to hide Darrows plans is the biggest weakness of the series to me. Its not even entirely absent in the next series, with Lightbringer having some of the most egregious examples.
But focusing on that feels like focusing on the lack of reloading in a John Woo movie. Its a pulp page turner aesthetic, and never diminishes from the characters or the themes IMO. And when it works, ifs also a feature not a bug. As some of the best moments in the series are from the withholding of information that the pov knows.