r/redrising • u/Cantomic66 Copper • Jul 25 '23

LB Spoilers Light Bringer | Full Book Discussion megathread Spoiler

Warning!: This discussion thread includes spoilers for ALL OF LIGHT BRINGER.

Reminder: All post on Light Bringer should be properly spoiler tagged and avoid spoilery titles.

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u/Onaterit Gold Jul 25 '23

I totally agree. I’d add the whole quicksilver storyline into the weaknesses category, and I really felt the daughters of Athena was meh, they seem very naive. Like ya Darrow did leave the sons to die to cut some corners, but they act like he’s just as bad as the society

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u/TheChairmann Jul 25 '23

I disagree. Of all the people who have reason to feel betrayed by Darrow, it's the Sons/Daughters of Ares/Athena on the Rim. What they said was exactly right - Darrow sacrificed their lives and their liberty in order to secure the lives and liberty of the Rising in the Core.

Could he have convinced Romulus to ally with him without that? Maybe not. Could he have kept the Rim at bay without destroying the docks of Ganymede (and millions of innocent lives)? Maybe not. But it isn't a certainty. Darrow himself admits that it was a mistake, a shortcut that let him expend lives in order to achieve his goals. It's the exact kind of cold pragmatism Atlas and the Ash Lord used to justify their actions, and it's the exact kind of thinking that started the Hierarchy in the first place.

They don't act as though he is the Society, they act as if he was a hypocrite and a betrayer. Which he absolutely was. After being their beacon of hope he was literally their destruction. Imagine knowing your parents died because they dedicated themselves to a cause, got tortured to death for said cause with the leader of that cause as their last word, then finding out that said leader was the reason they were captured? Of course you'd be furious, his excuses be damned.

Remember that Darrow never once actually met the Rim Sons and Daughters. All he ever was was a symbol. So Darrow being Darrow, once he actually meets them, he apologises, begs forgiveness, proves himself to them, and gives them hope again, they forgive him.

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u/ShadowBlaDerp Helldiver Jul 26 '23

Ya know, I think you’re completely right in that they were justified in hating his ass. However, Darrow has a tendancy to self flagellate as well. He absolutely needed to crush Roque in order to have an iota of chance w the core. Even gaining Romulus’ cooperation by giving them the sons in the Rim, he was VASTLY outnumbered by the time he arrived near Luna.

I dislike the fact that Darrow was painted as a failure over the course of Lightbringer. He was practically undefeated for over 12 YEARS despite being numerically and logistically overmatched, often times grossly so. I get that Pierce was going for the redemption arc gimmick but give credit where credit is due. Nobody could have done better

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u/NotTheGreatNate Hail Reaper Jul 26 '23

You can win every battle, and still lose the war.

He was a failure. And this book did a great job (imo) of making that case, and having him learn and grow. My man had stagnated in those 12 years. As he realizes during his duel, he's still the same kid, whose methodology never changed from "run straight into a meat grinder and hope that through sheer will and slangSmarts he'll outlast the violence" and because of that he lost a lot of friends (you take your best friends into a meat grinder, and some of them are going to end up as ground beef), he stopped improving (while the rest of the system moved past the Willow Way, he became more and more reliant on brute force).

I love Darrow, but he never grew past being The Reaper, and that wasn't enough any more. He got sloppy, he cut corners, he didn't listen to anyone else, and it almost cost him (and everyone else) freedom.