*That* scene in book 2
I might as well be downvote farming by posting this but here goes.
First note: I haven't finished the book yet so please don't spoil anything after this chapter. I literally just put it down after reading the scene. Yes, I'm fuming. Yes, I'm mad enough that I'm more emotional than rational. But I need to vent and I have ~opinions~.
Aequa's death is infuriating, it's heartbreaking, it plays into post-Game of Thrones fantasy tropes and it falls into problematic gendered tropes. I could forgive all that, but unfortunately I also think it's bad writing.
The biggest issue by far with tSotF so far is how ambitious it is. It's effectively 3 books simultaneously, with basically no intersection between the 3. By introducing two entire new worlds in book 2 of the series, a lot of the clever world-building that made Book 1 so strong has been fast-tracked for the two new worlds. Honestly, he's done it admirably. But what has suffered as a result has been character growth and depth.
None of the new characters introduced have any real weight to them. The most interesting is probably Netiqret, with the others largely forgettable. All that really held the story together to this point was the persisting cast from Book 1, of which Aequa was by far the most interesting and best-written. And all of them were getting way less time than I would've liked due to the split focus.
Speaking of forgettable characters... I genuinely had to google Decimus's name and I just read it. Decimus is one-dimensional and barely present. He's transparently antagonistic and unpleasant in the small number of appearances he does have. Iro was one of the least interesting parts of Book 1, serving as a one-dimensional barely-there antagonistic force in the same way as Decimus did, massively outclassed by Belli. The most interesting part of his story was his being chagrined at his father's actions at the chariot race - oh look, the boy has a personality!
This is the biggest problem to me here. This entire scene read as a blatantly contrived way to set Decimus up as a villain. It removed an "anchor" character in the midst of basically the entirety of Res being upended anyway - a time when we hardly needed it to happen, when we don't even have Eidhin around. The head crush was an obvious choice to make her "unrevivable" (one of the reasons I'm not a fan of resurrection stuff in magic systems is the whole real death trope) and was just so god damn random. Not to mention, whilst the differing strengths of Tertii is Quintii etc has been well established... we've also seen Vis beat up a Sextus. While not receiving any Will at all. So the sudden, complete helplessness felt incredibly forced. At the end of it all I'm not even mad at Decimus, I'm just mad at Islington. I don't even care about Decimus!
Adding to this is the trope/gender issues of the scene (and of most male first-person POV novels I think I've read honestly). I think fridging is over-maligned due to how prevalent it has been historically, and any death of a female character inevitably gets referred to as fridging. That said, there are very few good female characters in this series and Islington was clearly baiting a romance between RVis and Aequa. It's such a clear example of the fridging trope it's not even funny.
The worst part is, I don't want her to come back. Death should be impactful, should be final. Resurrections are largely lame. So instead, I'm left with what I feel was a poor decision, the loss of a character I liked, and no way it can be fixed without hurting the novel more.
I've read and enjoyed all of Red Rising. This is not (just) a reaction to the death of a character. That said, I am a bit tired of this post-ASOIAF world where every fantasy/sci-fi feels the need to constantly fucking kill everyone just for shock value or because "bad people do bad things". The first book struck a great balance. Callidus's death was tragic, pointless and massively impactful, but didn't make me feel cheated. This makes me feel cheated, and frustrated. It makes me not want to read the rest of the book, let alone the series, though I'm sure I still will. It has seriously damaged my trust in Islington as a writer.
Oh and, stop with the head crushing. It's unnecessarily violent, overdone and just annoying. That one's just a personal gripe though and doesn't really factor into my opinion.
EDIT: I am so sorry if anybody read this and got spoiled before I put the spoiler tag on. I changed account and copy pasted the post body and didn't correctly spoiler tag it 😭