This book (and probably series) is pulp that is trying very hard not to be pulp, and ends up tripping on itself in contradictory ways in the process.

Poetic debate between Darrow and his wife Eo about dying standing up or living on your knees. Comes rather early in the novel before the tone can be set with such gravitas, but serves its purpose well.

When Darrow is hanged, he says that he can't dance, but then once he joins the Sons of Ares, he apparently already knew how to dance very well from his uncle. This sorta thing happens a lot throughout this book in a way annoyingly similar to R.F. Kuang's protagonists/plot development. The protagonist is able to just do everything because he is the protagonist even if it runs contrary to what we're to expect from the everything else we're to expect from the environment/culture/worldbuilding.

Upon being kidnapped, he immediately goes from being willing to die on his knees to wanting to destroy the Red overlords. Perhaps this is the impulsivity of youth, but it doesn't seem like the author is contextualizing it that way as much as just priming us to enjoy a revenge arc spanning 5 books based on the death of a character who dies in the first 50 pages, in her like,,, 2nd scene....

Also can't sus out the setting exactly. The reds are mining for resources, they have gravity boots and mega crains, but whipping and hanging are still used for corporal/capital punishment. They ride horses, an have esoteric/mystic type examinations, and everything is named after Grecco-Roman pantheon. Darrow's able to assume a false identity that goes unnoticed and unquestioned despite the existence of nanobots (which spells mass surveillance to anyone with ears and an eye for totalitarian oligarchy, but just don't think about it too hard, okay reader?

As the story unfolds (the back 3/4s being a hunger games exercise of the Gold institute candidates) we come to realize "How privileged are we as the reader to have the narrative frame of the only character with morals!" And the book pretty much just consists of Darrow making pacts with himself to kill everyone, and then boasting some plot armor to survive a battle with said person only to win them over and then immediately think of them as a brother despite the fact that he (not 50 pages prior) loathed them as a rapist, murderer, or just a gold.

The pacing is too fast. Characters are only introduced once or twice before they serve the purpose for which they were minted, and for example, the exposition of every day life as a hell diver takes all of three chapters and then we flash forward several months and just have to sit with this character who's imbued with vengeance, but I can't really empathize with. I think that there's an argument to be made for the fact that run of the mill/germane crime could happen at any point in time to spawn this sort of arc and a revolution, but because the entirety of the pacing doesn't make it seem punitively inconsequential it just seems rushed. I suppose this is preferable to belaboring point, but I think that there's ways to fill out the plot and give characters purpose without being boring.

The narcissism of Darrow to think that he's the only Red who ought to be allowed to role-play as a Gold and therefore that's why he has to kill Titus. not because Titus deserves to fucking die for raping a bunch of people, but because it jeopardizes his own security as a red masquerading as a gold. And then the disgusting "whoa is me" charade about now he has to kill Titus because he jeopardizes his plan.

Similar weird enemies to lovers arc between he and Pax, who he then gets killed in a stupid ass way: he tells Pax to hold down a knife in Jackal’s hand so he can cut off the other one, which is like a huge tactical error: "go stand next to our enemy with a knife." The number of students present also doesn’t add up for “armies,” but don't think about it too hard.

"you reap what you sow" is corny asf

befriends and becomes indebted to all these Golds whom he projects loathing and hatred onto. Maybe this should be read as character development, but he just seems super impulsive and lacking any sort of perspective or appreciation of the irony because like he acknowledges the irony, and then puts his head down on his rage-driven path of vengeance and keeps bitching about it while doing it.

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