Golden Son blows its predecessor Red Rising out of the water in so many ways. But it wouldn't have been able to do that without the excellent groundwork that was laid. Where as I only seriously enjoyed Red Rising, I absolutely loved Golden Son. 
 Kicking it off with the fireworks 
 Things immediately hit the ground running in the action department with Golden Son. It's as if we are moved from one pivotal situation to another with just enough downtime between each to let you catch your breath. I tell you there wasn't a moment of bored for me! That is where Red Rising fell short for me at times. Because Darrow was stuck in that war games area and there is only so much of the same brand of action and brutality I could take before growing bored of it. But in Golden Son each situation brings some major thing to the table that was key in driving the story in a certain direction. I felt like there wasn't a word wasted. 
 Jumping forward in time 
 Normally when a second book makes a jump forward in time it doesn't always work out but I thought it was well done here by only being a few years and honestly hey important stuff doesn't ALWAYS take place in someone's life so I felt that it was really realistic in that way and helped solidify things for me. Darrow and his friends are 20 now and he's working for the man that sentenced his dear wife Eo to death. He's having some internal struggles with maintaining his double life. Not that he really has a double life since he hasn't heard from the Sons of Ares in all this time. He doesn't know what else he needs to do so he continues doing the things he thinks will best position him for the future fight. 
 Friends of all colors 
 I absolutely love the theme of friendship in Golden Son. Darrow really drives home how important friends are to him and how much more powerful being a friend is above so many other things. There are a lot of ways in which this theme comes into play and I really enjoyed how all of the relationships unfolded. On top of that we got to see more of the other colors and Darrow bring more of the other races into his fold. I especially loved the addition of Obsidian. The supporting characters were better fleshed out this time around, especially the females. That was a big problem I had with the first book, none of the females were very strong characters to me except Mustang towards the very end. 
 Thoughts on the narration 
 Is it possible to be even better then the first!? Why yes! I think this might be because the narrator seemed like he must have gotten really immersed in the characters by this time. The voice acting and different accents and nuances to the array of character voices was just fabulous! I definitely loved the narration Tim Gerard Reynolds did with Golden Son so much more then Red Rising. How he managed to really put such full force of personality into each voice is beyond me. Ooh goodness I love Sevro! I absolutely recommend the audio version over the print there is nothing like listening to these characters come to life.