Book Review—The Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown (Contains Spoilers)
- writer_alexandra_lee
- Feb 27, 2021
- 11 min read
Hello, everyone! In this post, I wanted to talk about a series I finished earlier this week: The Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown. I want to note that I’m only talking about the first three books in the series (these books are considered to be the original trilogy). I haven’t read the other two books. I plan on getting around to them soon, but I have some other books I have to read first. My thoughts on this series will be organized by book—Red Rising (book one), Golden Son (book two), and Morning Star (book three).
This review contains major spoilers for the entire series, so if you haven’t read the series yet, skip this review. Usually, I try to keep my reviews spoiler-free, but in order to discuss everything I want to comment on, I will be spoiling.
Make sure to leave a comment telling me your thoughts on the series. Without further ado, let’s get into this review. (Ha! That rhymed!)
Red Rising: Book 1
This series was on my tbr list for the longest time. I’d heard it was similar to the Hunger Games trilogy, which I'd loved. I was looking for a fun and compelling series to try out over Christmas break, so I decided to give this one a go.
There is a “prologue” in this book. It’s not really a prologue. It’s a single page at the beginning. The first line of the “prologue” reads: “I would have lived in peace, but my enemies brought me war.”
This line immediately pulled me in. Looking back on the trilogy as a whole, this line does a great job of summing up the themes the series covered. This line oversimplifies war. We’ve heard many times it takes two to fight, whether that be a sibling feud or a full scale battle between nations. There are moments in this series where almost every character, at one time or another, underestimates the realities of war. When they finally realize the cost of rebellion and freedom—the lives at stake, the things they will lose, the struggles they have to endure in order to reach the light, we see their humanity. These are pivotal moments for a lot of these characters. In these moments, they aren’t heroes. They are regular people who are scared for their lives and the lives of their loved ones. These are enlightening moments for the reader and the characters.
Like this first line, there are many lines throughout this series that made me think, and I like that. I didn’t go into this Sci-fi series expecting to do much thinking. The thoughts this trilogy stirred in me were welcomed and refreshing. The wide spectrum of emotions this series evoked, and continues to evoke, in my heart and soul (heart AND soul) is the main reason I loved it so much.
Darrow is the protagonist in this series. I had a love-hate relationship with Darrow for a majority of the series. In the end, my feelings on his character became very clear (I will go deeper into this when I talk about Morning Star). Darrow lives in a hierarchical society in space where everyone is divided into groups based on their color—there are Golds (the highest rank in the society), Silvers, Blues, Obsidians, Greens, Yellows, Violets, etc. Reds, the group Darrow belongs to, are the lowest color in the society. They are basically slaves. At the beginning of the series, Darrow doesn’t know the injustice being done to his color. He believes his people are mining helium-3 to help humanity colonize Mars.
He is sixteen when the story starts. If you didn’t know, I’m also sixteen. Young Darrow and his wife, Eo, really resonated with me. I’ve read a lot of YA, so I’m used to reading about characters who are close to me in age. Darrow and Eo affected me a lot differently than a majority of other YA characters. They were thrown into a world where they had to grow up pretty quickly. As I read, I tried to picture myself in their shoes and I found it really difficult to do that. I was connected to their characters early on in the story because I could sympathize with them.
This storyline—where a young person is forced into adulthood—has always resonated with me. Today, I feel like people are in a rush to grow up. I also think a lot of parents put their children in situations (not always on purpose) where they are forced to grow up. Innocence and youth are underappreciated in our society. Ignorance (maybe that’s not the right word) is a natural part of human development, and taking it away prematurely is damaging. This theme came full circle in the last line of Morning Star. (I will elaborate on this when I speak on the final book.)
After our introduction to the characters, things quickly go downhill…
Eo’s death was not the inciting incident I was expecting at all. I was shocked Brown killed a character (one I’d assumed would play a vital part in the story) so early on. Eo sings a song before she is killed that goes on to fuel Darrow and the rebellion throughout the series. I didn’t fully capture what Eo’s death, or her song, represented until the end of the third book. (That’s another reason my feelings on this series weren’t super clear until I reached the end.) Since finishing the series, this song has been stuck in my head. It’s beautiful. I love what it represents. It fits the story perfectly. It evokes so much emotion in the reader and really helps them to understand the characters and their world. Every time I read the lyrics, it makes me want to cry and throw up. After reading the trilogy, it hits a nerve it didn’t hit before, and I fully understand the meaning behind it. Here’s a little clip of the song:
My son, my son
Remember the chains
When gold ruled with iron reins
We roared and roared
And twisted and screamed
For ours, a vale
Of better dreams.
I love it so much; it gives me chills. The idea of the Vale is another underappreciated, yet beautiful part of the first book that (again) is not fully understood until the end of the series.
Throughout the first book, Darrow has to face a lot of challenges—he is carved into a Gold, joins the Sons of Ares (a group of Red rebels committed to tearing down the hierarchy), and goes on to join the Gold’s Institute (a place where young Golds are put through a series of tests to earn their place in their society). Here, he meets Mustang, Cassius, Roque, Julian, Sevro, and a lot of the other main characters.
One of my favorite tropes of all time is the friends-become-family trope. I’m a sucker for it. All of these characters, along with many others added throughout the series, work together to build a society they are proud to live in. Many of them don’t have biological families. I loved watching the relationships in this series progress. There were many ups and downs, but they came through for one another and that hit close to home.
Now for my thoughts on some of these side characters: I wasn’t a huge fan of Mustang in this book. She added some conflict, which I appreciated, but it wasn’t until the middle of Golden Son that I began to really enjoy her. Unlike Mustang, I loved Cassius and Sevro from the very beginning. The dialogue in this series was super entertaining, and these two have some of the most comedic lines. Here's a quote from Sevro:
“I killed their pack leader," Sevro says when I ask why the wolves follow him. He looks me up and down and flashes me an impish grin from beneath the wolf pelt. "Don't worry, I wouldn't fit in your skin.”
Sevro continued to be my favorite character throughout the series. He was the underdog of the Golds. He was sneaky and clever and short. His friendship with Darrow is one of the most well-written friendships I’ve ever read. He added so much to the series for me. If it wasn’t for him, I would not have enjoyed the series as much as I did. More on his character later.
The end of book one concludes with Darrow and Mustang uniting all of the remaining members of the Institute and taking on Olympus (where all of the high-class, stuffy Proctors sit and watch the students battle it out). This is Darrow’s first true act of rebellion against the Golds and offers the reader a glimpse of what is to come.
My thoughts at the end of the first book were pretty simple: I enjoyed the book. Was it my favorite book of all time? No. Not all of the writing was super great. There were parts that seemed repetitive and boring, but it upheld its promise to the reader: It provided conflict, adventure, intriguing worlds, and interesting characters. Red Rising was compelling enough to pull me into book two with pretty high expectations. The question now is: Were those expectations met?
Golden Son: Book 2
Golden Son was my least favorite book in the trilogy. This book was necessary to advance the arc of the overall series, but it definitely could not be a stand alone novel or a book one could enjoy without a lot of background information.
Book two Darrow was very prideful. He lost a lot of the heroic traits that made him so compelling in the first book. You could tell the author did this on purpose to advance his character arc but it was a little much. A lot of the characteristics that made Darrow, Darrow—the reason he started the rebellion in the first place, his connection to the Reds, his relationships with his friends were tested in this book. He made a lot of mistakes. He got a lot of his friends killed. (The number of people who die in this series is crazy.) He made some bad deals, which in the end lead to the Jackal betraying him.
Darrow did grow in this book though. One could argue he learned some of his most important lessons in this second book, and these lessons went on to help him win the war for his people—Reds and Golds alike.
Morning Star: Book 3
And finally Morning Star! This book was hands down my favorite. So much happened in this final book. It’s going to be difficult to cover it all. After the disastrous ending of Golden Son, Darrow was definitely humbled. The Jackal’s torture and the ever-present fear of Darrow’s demise did a lot for him in the beginning of this story. I found the first few chapters of this book incredibly insightful. These chapters reminded the reader why Darrow set off on this journey in the first place. They summarized Darrow’s character arc and added more to it. For the first time since the Red Rising, the reader felt sorry for Darrow and sympathized with his struggles and pain.
Along with Darrow, I enjoyed watching Sevro’s and Victra’s character arcs unfold throughout this final book. Victra was introduced in Golden Sun. She was also captured and tortured by the Jackal, so it was nice to watch how her and Darrow’s relationship grew through their shared trauma. Sevro had to step up in this book and become Ares after his father’s death in Golden Son (guys, I’m forgetting to mention so many important parts of the plot so forgive me).
Victra and Sevro’s relationship was unexpected, yet it was one of my favorite parts of the last book. They are both so independent and closed off at times. I screamed so loud when they got engaged. I was never expecting it, but Brown knew what the reader wanted even before they knew what they wanted and he found a way to give it to them. Good for him.
Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: My thoughts on Sevro’s death. There’s a part in Morning Star where Sevro fakes his death and man…Brown and I were about to go a few rounds. Sevro is “dead” for about five chapters. As I read those chapters, I tried to come up with a way Sevro could have faked his death. I recalled the narrator (Darrow) mentioning a flask and vest Sevro had right before he died. A few chapters after his death, I’d put the pieces together, and I was pretty confident he wasn’t actually dead. I’ve only ever cried twice while reading, and I cried for Sevro. Think of all of the tears I wasted on his death. Thanks Brown.
Mustang and Darrow’s relationship was on and off throughout the series. It wasn’t on and off in an annoying way. The conflicts these two went through were real conflicts. They weren’t simple misunderstandings or petty fights, and I appreciated that so much. I don’t want to read about high school drama. I want to read about real conflict, and this story has conflict for days—Darrow hid his true Red identity from Mustang for a majority of the first two books. Mustang felt betrayed and lied to. Darrow was scared Mustang wouldn’t accept him because of his color. The list of struggles could go on.
Discrimination against people for their color is another message that is deeply interwoven into this series. Sevro calls it colorism, but in reality it is incredibly similar to the racism that goes on in our world. It's insightful and important to think about how books, even genre fiction, can represent real-world problems. Books can teach you so much. This lesson became especially apparent in this series.
The ending of this book was unexpected, yet perfect. There are a few specific scenes I want to touch on: First, the scene where Mustang pulls Adrius’s feet. On Mars, the gravity is different than it is on earth, so in order to hang someone you have to pull their feet. The pulling of the feet is a sign of respect and love for the person who is hanged. It is done by a loved one (Darrow pulled Eo’s feet). Adrius (also known as the Jackal) is Mustang’s brother. Their relationship is not heavily talked about throughout the series, but we find out enough to get the idea they once loved one another. The final scene between these two shows that even in the end, Mustang loved her brother. It provided closure for Mustang and the reader, and it is very heartbreaking.
Lastly, I want to talk about the very end of the book. We find out Darrow has a child Mustang has been hiding from him. At first glance, this may seem super out of place but it actually fits into the story quite well. In Golden Son, Darrow found out his wife was pregnant when she was killed (that ruined me and him). This ending helped Darrow heal from the brutalities of war. It gave him another thing to fight for and it set the story up for the final two books of the series.
There is also an epilogue in this book (which I was not expecting but was pleasantly surprised by). Here’s where I circle back to the growing-up-too-fast theme. The final paragraph of the epilogue reads:
I can be a builder, not just a destroyer. Eo and Fitchner saw that when I could not. They believed in me. So whether they wait for me in the Vale or not, I feel them in my heart, I hear their echo beating across the worlds. I see them in my son, and, when he is old enough, I will take him on my knee and his mother and I will tell him of the rage of Ares, the strength of Ragnar, the honor of Cassius, the love of Sevro, the loyalty of Victra, and the dream of Eo, the girl who inspired me to live for more.
As the series progressed, the way Darrow viewed Eo changed. When she was alive, he almost idolized her. After her death, he saw her faults and realized she was just as young and confused as he was. This is a huge revelation for Darrow, especially in this final book. It brought Darrow and Eo’s relationship full circle—he would always love her, but he had to move on. He started off his journey changing their world for her but he ended this book doing it for himself. This realization was bitter-sweet for both the reader and Darrow, but I loved it so much because it was real—people grow apart sometimes. People shape one another in incredible ways and then they find that the new versions of themselves are no longer compatible—they move on to better things.
This ending did it for me. It made everything clear and wrapped up the story perfectly. Darrow and I had our highs and lows, but this series will go down as one of my all time favorites. I love the characters. I love the plot. I love the lessons it teaches those who dare to look deep enough into a sci-fi book about a Red and the girl who inspired him to live for more.
Break the chains!
Thank you so much for reading this lengthy review. I could write a novel on why I love this series, and I’d still have more to say. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and check out some of my other posts down below.
It’s been a pleasure writing for you, and until next time—stay weird and stay writing. - Lexi
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