Dark Age

February 16, 2020

My January read was the massive 752-page Dark Age by Pierce Brown.

Dark Age is the fifth book in his bestselling science fiction series, Red Rising, which follows Darrow, a Red mining slave from Mars who infiltrates the Golds and overturns the balance of class and power in a futuristic colour-coded society.

Dark Age held up to my high expectations. Told from five perspectives, the reader experiences the savagery of war and duplicity of politics.

Darrow, the once loved hero of the Republic, rages unsanctioned war on Mercury in the hopes of salvaging his dream of reversing societal power.

His wife, Virginia, the Sovereign of the Republic, faces enemies, both political and criminal, at every turn in the capital on Luna, while trying to rally forces behind Darrow.

Red refugee, Lyria, faces a life worse than anything she had in the mines of Mars.  

 Ephraim, thief and mercenary, finds himself trusting enemies and searching for redemption.

And Lysander, heir to the once ruling Gold family, seeks to bring peace and unite the Golds against Darrow on Mercury.

As with Pierce Brown’s other novels, the action grabs from page one and never lets go. The forget-to-breathe pace, plot twists and character revelations kept me reading into the early morning hours.

Dark Age depicts a society at war. Gruesome violence is commonplace. Characters I once loved, I now hate due to the actions taken during the mess of war. And ones I once hated, redeemed themselves. No one escapes the carnage. People die with every turn of the page, yet I cared enough about Darrow and Virginia, and many others that I could not put it down.

That ending: so unexpected, a brief moment of calm in the midst of war. And that one character didn’t actually die in Iron Gold, what?!?  Bring on book six! I cannot wait for the finale.

At its barest essentials, the Red Rising series is highly entertaining, if at times complicated and violent. I highly recommend it.