I generally really like the work author Pierce Brown has done with his sci-fi Red Rising series. Although the first book sounds a lot like a more adult-version of The Hunger Games, Brown presented a rather morally complex world where few characters were straight good or evil. In a setting where people are chosen by birth and breeding for certain jobs based around a color scheme, Darrow, a Red at the bottom of the social ladder, finds a way to surgically become a member of the Gold ruling class, leading to a rebellion to give people freedom to choose what they do with their lives and not be limited by their birth.
But after his initial trilogy, Brown returned to that world with an even more morally complex and complicated setting. His fifth book in the run is, very appropriately, titled Dark Age.
Brown’s fourth book, Iron Gold, brought in something new for the series in the form of multiple narrators. In the first three books, everything was told from Darrow’s point of view. And while Darrow is a compelling narrator at the center of action. Iron Gold used four different narrators: Darrow, former soldier and Gray Ephraim, a Red refugee just trying to care for her blind nephew Lyria, and Lysander, the grandson of the Sovereign Darrow and his allies deposed and killed in the previous book. Dark Age continues this trend by bringing in a fifth narrator in the form of the current Sovereign, Darrow’s wife Virginia.
That’s actually one of the things I really dig about this series in general and this book in particular. Darrow in the first trilogy was consistently surprised to learn how other people, even presumed enemies, had moral codes of their own that were just different than his own. My personal favorite was probably from the second book when Darrow learned his mother never liked his deceased first wife, as Mama Darrow (correctly) figured that woman would just lead Darrow to trouble.
As such, it is good getting Lysander’s point of view. He’s thrown his lot in with Darrow’s enemies, but unlike many of his allies, he isn’t doing it out of some sort of lust for power. No, Lysander, like Darrow early on, is an idealist. Lysander honestly believes that Gold not being in charge leads to chaos, and he may not be completely wrong. The Republic is something of a mess compared to the old Empire, but longtime readers know most Gold aren’t really the good people Lysander imagines them to be. That said, he sees Darrow as a murderous monster, and Darrow’s nickname is the Reaper for a reason.
But Brown’s strength beyond creating an interesting world is how he keeps things from being overly predictable. Indeed, my least favorite book in the series is still the third, mostly because I did predict a plot twist or two before they happened.
Nothing like that happens here. If anything, the book is living up to its title. Every time his characters seem to make progress on their personal goals, something unexpected and bad happens to drag them back down again. And the things that drag them down are truly harsh at times. Victoria may be making progress on the political end to assist her husband and his army trapped on Mercury–and Brown actually makes the politicking as compelling as his action scenes–when a sudden action from her enemies changes the stakes in unexpected ways.
“Changing the stakes in unexpected ways” may as well be this book’s subtitle.
Now, for reasons I don’t quite get, this book did take me a while to finish. Granted, that may be because I was reading three or four books at a time, and this one was only read at certain times of the week. But every time I did pick up Dark Age, I remembered all over again why I love this series. Brown set up a cliffhanger or three for the next book, and I know I will be reading it as soon as it comes out.
Grade: A-
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