The big new plan for 2024 is to clear my reading backlog before I let myself buy any new books that aren’t part of a series that I already own. Red Rising has been sitting on my bookshelf for months, because it’s Part One of, currently, six, and the series is expected to conclude with a seventh book that has not yet been released. It was clearly originally planned as a trilogy; you can see on those covers that they refer to the “Red Rising Trilogy,” and subsequent books just declare themselves to be “A Red Rising Novel.”

I, uh, just read the entire first trilogy back-to-back-to-back over the course of a week? And it took me less than 24 hours to read the 520-page third book? I had heard from some people that you don’t really have any idea what you’re in for in the rest of the series from the first book, and while I enjoyed it, it didn’t blow me away, but man, Golden Son and especially Morning Star are fucking amazing, and Morning Star in particular moves at such a breakneck(*) pace and is so twisty-turny that I’m not even sure what to compare it with. I don’t want to do a full review right now, so I’m not going to get into the plot at all, but damn. The end of Morning Star is a great stopping point, so I’m going to let the series simmer for a little bit before jumping into books 4, 5, and 6, but if you’re familiar with these books and something was holding you back, go for it. If you need more detail, I’ll probably write in more depth once the series is done.

Anyway, that’s been my Saturday; I read the first half of Morning Star yesterday and then didn’t do much of anything today until I’d finished it. The wife and I are gonna watch John Wick 4 once the boy goes to bed, and in between now and then I can hear my PlayStation crying out for me to stop neglecting it. So it’s video game time, I think.

Y’all doing anything interesting this weekend? Tell me about it.

(*)No pun intended, for those of you who are familiar with the series.