The Red Rising Trilogy
This is a long one. But to be fair to me, it’s three books over 400 pages each…
The Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown considers a future in which society has moved from earth to terraformed planets in space structured with castes from Red to Gold. The colors represent individuals’ places in society and their jobs/skills.
“When the first colonists ventured forth from Earth to make their home on the moon, they created a hierarchy of labor. In time, they improved this hierarchy through genetic and surgical manipulation of their fellow man. The result was a color-coded Society of perfect efficiency, one dominated by a superior breed of humanity, the Golds.” - Golden Son
Darrow grew up in the mines of Mars toiling to create livability for the colors on the surface. Mining as a ‘helldiver’ - the deepest into the mine subjecting themselves to dangerous temperatures, potential mine collapses, and pitvipers - Darrow is happy to survive and begin building his family outside of the mines. That is, until his wife Eo is executed for treason. Darrow is not the dreamer with a mission that Eo was, but he starts to take on the importance of Eo’s dream as he reckons with the lies he and the reds have been told about the society. They have been told they are mining in order to make the surface of Mars livable, but when Darrow learns that not only Mars but the whole solar system is covered in cities and the Reds are slaves to the society’s prosperity, he is recruited by revolutionaries to infiltrate the society’s legendary Institute. Through the first book, Darrow competes for his life against the best Golds society has to offer, becoming one of his enemies in an attempt to bring them down.
"I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. "That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them."
"I live for you," I say sadly.
Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more." - Red Rising
I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I will leave it there in terms of synopsis. I will say though that this series does something that’s somewhat rare for me – it gets better with each book. These books are dystopian/sci-fi/fantasy, which is generally not my first choice of genre, but the series surprised me. The deep human emotions and complicated motivations, familial and political drama, and the competitive atmosphere drew me in. From Darrow’s perspective, the reader meets a cast of characters from Reds to Pinks to Violets to Golds and it is impossible to avoid developing love (and sometimes hate) for these interesting characters of all colors. My favorite characters, even the ones that seem as close to perfect as possible, had moments that I disagreed with and that’s a mark of a really well-developed character and story to me. Also, there are a wonderful amount of funny, hopeful, and victorious moments for a series that starts in such a grim place.
“I know you don’t think you deserve to be happy,” she says. “But you do, child. You deserve it more than anyone I know. So do what you need to do, then come home to me… then start living.” - Morning Star
A note on Darrow’s perspective: I wouldn’t say he’s an unreliable narrator necessarily, but there are some points where even his thoughts are performative for the purpose of preserving the surprise for the reader in how he was going to get out of a bad situation or pull a clever move. It’s not just that there is a scene that the reader doesn’t see, which does happen occasionally too, but that Darrow’s deepest thoughts are portrayed to the reader somewhat falsely. While I only bumped against it a couple of times and I think the payoff of the surprise was worth it, it was an interesting tactic I noticed. This brings me to the feeling I got the whole time I was reading – these would make amazing movies. The writing is so cinematic and the scenes that are set up feel so real that I felt like I could see them. In a movie, you might see Darrow’s brow furrow with worry or hear him talk to someone about a concern, but you wouldn’t hear his thoughts in the same way. While something would surely be lost in this translation, it would remove that bit of dishonesty in the narrative.
“They say a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. They made no mention of the heart.” - Golden Son
While I have loved reading these books, I have just a couple of pieces of commentary. There are a million characters in these books, and I took a few months in between reading the first one and the second one. While that was a personal problem and I’d recommend you read them all in quick succession, some of the characters are presented to the reader as super important, but then they are dropped or the emotional impact of something that happens to them feels hollow when we haven’t really gotten much of their story. I think there is a lot of good world building in this series, but occasionally a new piece of history or structure is introduced without any context, and it took me out of the narrative for a moment while I tried to figure out what a word or concept was referring to. My other small criticism is that I feel like Darrow has some of the same existential crises or reflections multiple times to where it starts to get a tiny bit repetitive. There is also a tendency to say some of the points of commentary pretty blatantly, rather than trusting the reader to see between the lines. Pierce Brown generally has some signature moves in his writing like saying “my friend” instead of repeating the name or saying “him”; and writing action scenes in a very specific rhythm – not even a criticism, just something interesting. All of that said, none of these were really detrimental to my reading experience.
I have laughed, cried, stopped breathing, cheered out loud, and fallen in love through reading this series. I hope you will too 😊 Thanks Lauren for sharing another favorite with me!
“We never asked to bow. Who is he to say Reds and Browns toiling to death is for the greater good? … How can he sit there and say that he alone knows what is best for me, for my family? It is not his right. Just as it was not his right to come into my world and take Eo. And if he thinks might makes it his right, then it’s my bloodydamn right to cut off his head right now. Instead I stand and cross the distance between us. Kneeling, I take his hand and kiss his bloodydamn ring. ‘As you will it, my liege.’” – Golden Son
