Just finished book 1

This is the first "Young Adult" book I've read as an adult and it's interesting how much that perspective changes what I take away from it. Had I read this is a teenager I would've thought Darrow was an outlandish, aspirational badass but now he comes off as a painfully realistic traumatized mess of a kid.

He grew up in a slave environment where systemic murder and rape by the hand of the state was as certain as the rising sun, never even considered the idea freedom; probably expected to die in his early 20s. This suppressed trauma is the bedrock of his character.

He's constantly internally monologuing on how he can't relate to the golds due to their opulence, or their lack of empathy as though it were a virtue but if you go back to the mining prologue you'll find he couldn't relate to anyone there either. He had no real friends, no care for his fellow dying miners, even his wife comes off as more of a transactional source of love than a human being. It's clever how the plot requires him to conceal his identity for the Ares mission because it gives Darrow himself the perfect out. He can justify the witty one liners and fearful persona designed to create distance to protect his physical self but I believe subcounsciously this comes so naturally because of how essential it is to maintain his fragile psyche.

At 16 I'd see Darrow as John Wick but now at 30 he reads more like Holden Caulfield.