I have been pacing up and down in my room for the past half hour, trying to digest the last two chapters (arguably the entire forth part). For the longest time I considered giving this book four stars in order to differentiate between the first and second book's rating. The terminology was going over my head and in a way kept me at a distance. However, the expansion of the world building and political intrigue along with an amazing set of characters that I loved but didn't always like kept me hooked! My main fear was that Golden Son might suffer from middle-book-syndrome, as in a whole lot of pages without essential plot, but for me that was far from true. Even things that I normally despise in storytelling and Brown did in this book, I ended up liking! Case and point: When it comes to plot twists, I prefer it when the author outsmarts me by foreshadowing a turn of events that I didn't predict or knows a whole lot about the technical/scientific/magical side of things than I do. I don't like it when I'm left gobsmacked just because the characters were plotting behind the reader's back, so to speak, and they end up finding out last. Happenstances created for shock value simply by keeping the reader out of the loop are often distracting, messy and cop outs when it comes to creating a story. Yet Brown did this time and time again and I was left shook mouth agape (and loved every minute of it). I took my time with this installment (I finished it in the span of one month) and I think I'm glad I did. Now I got the Greek edition to read at my leisure at another time, because I'm sure this series will be an all-time favourite for me.