red rising saga, by pierce brown
science fiction, dystopia | mature audiences | 5 stars

*spoilers ahead but not too much*

i feel like i’ve been obsessed with these books ever since i first read them so i thought that besides my occasional way too excited but random ravings about these books, they deserved a proper book review.

the series follows darrow, a red miner from mars, as he takes on the society divided into castes based on colour. the colours are all genetically modified to make them more adept at what they're supposed to do, but the gold are like ,,,,good at everything, have stronger bones, are smarter etc etc.

• high colours: gold (rulers), silver (bankers, businessmen), white (pirests, judges), copper (bureaucrats)
• mid colours: blue (starship crew), yellow (doctors, researchers), green (programmers, tech people), violet (artists), orange (mechanics, engineers), gray (soldiers, police)
• low colours: brown (servants, cooks), obsidian (elite soldiers), pink (pleasure slaves), red (manual labour, miners)

so darrow is a member of the lowest caste and he lives his life in the underground of mars up until his wife is tragically murdered by the ruling class for singing what’s considered a rebellious song - later known as the song of persephone (she, of course, becomes a symbol to the resistance movement and basically a martyr - i loved reading about how her sacrifice transcends into something she couldn't have ever imagined but also, eo (that's the name of darrow's wife) was pretty damn cunning which was obvious in the little we see of her so...who knows what went on in her brain). his people don't know that there are others, living on the surface of mars and other planets, even though the society colonised them ages ago - the ruling planet is luna (the moon) and gold, along with the other castes, have been keeping a lot of the red population, especially the miners, in the dark, because it's easier to manipulate them into being productive when they think they're doing it for the greater good of man. except they're not and they're slaves even though they don't know it

there’s an underground resistance - the sons of ares - formed many years prior that took an interest in darrow due to his dexterity and other skillsets he learned while mining, so after the death of his wife, they use it to fuel his rage (which he has plenty of because darrow is 1000000% a gryffindor) and then use him for their own purpose. (and he's not the only one)

darrow gets his own dose of genetic engineering because the resistance crafts him into a weapon, a fake gold, and they send him off to the elite institute where only the most elite of the gold caste survive and earn their face scar (it's a ritual type of thing), making them the peerless scarred, respected among the gold as the very best. the purpose is for him to infiltrate the (gold) society so he could destroy it from within.

he has to fight for his life, make alliances, deal with betrayal and ultimately do a damn good job of playing gold if he wants his mission to succeed.

shenanigans abound because not all gold are bad, not all of them are what they seem and some of them want to make the society into a better world, a demokracy, and don’t consider the lower castes less-than.

darrow meets some of my favourite characters, like sevro and mustang (the baddassest woman in the universe i love her a lot), fellow golds (are they though?) at the institute and they form lifelong bonds which will mark them for years to come. he also meets lots of evil, cruel, terrible people who are later even more evil and cruel than they were as teenagers at the institute. and the jackal - probably the most mindfucky, mastermindy, evil-y character i've read about in the past couple of years.

and what comes after the institute? that was just war games, but it’s not the real world, and darrow wants to overthrow the society with the help of his friends and the sons of ares.

along the way he makes terrible decisions that affect millions of people, a lot of people die because of him, but a lot of them don’t. he’s not your typical hero, he’s not your typical anti-hero. he’s a boy, later a man, who has to make tough choices and some of those choices are bad, and that’s real. war is dark, gritty, terrible, and these books portray it well. even the heroes have dark sides, make bad decisions and occasionally fuck up in the worst ways.

almost everything is gray area, but i also appreciate that there are some things darrow and his friends simply stand for and won’t budge on them (like basic human rights) and idk, when you’re dealing with someone who thinks you shouldn’t exist, i’m comfortable with gray areas in dealing with them.

there's also lots of politics and political games in these books and if you're a fan of those types of stories, this is definitely the book for you.

this is a must read if you’re a fan of stuff like dune, battlestar galactica, the hunger games, asoiaf even (though it's not fantasy)… it’s just so good and i love rebellions in dystopias.

(also, pierce brown is in general a great story teller and the books have numerous quotes i could quote back at you but there was a time where i made my twitter a red rising shrine with quote screenshots so i’m going to refrain from it for now.)

there are five novels posted as of right now:
the original trilogy: red rising | golden son | morning star
the next trilogy that happens ten years after the original one ends: iron gold | dark age (the book that made me want to throw my kindle at a wall but ultimately i love my kindle too much for that)