Summary: Dark Age

The GIST

Dark Age by Pierce Brown is the fifth novel set in the world of Red Rising and the second book of the four-part sequence that continues the original trilogy. Published on July 30, 2019, it debuted at number four on The New York Times Best Seller list. It begins at the very moment Iron Gold ends, ten years after a slave uprising toppled the color-coded Society and replaced it with the Solar Republic. The revolution won. This book asks what happens when winning turns out to be the easy part.

The title is a promise. The Republic's greatest army is stranded on a hostile planet, its Senate is tearing itself apart, its enemies have found a leader, and its home world is about to be overrun from several directions at once. Brown spreads the story across three worlds and a large cast, following a general, a ruler, an exiled heir, a thief and a refugee, and he puts every one of them under more pressure than they have ever faced. It matters because it is the hinge of the series: the volume in which the bright certainties of the first trilogy are tested against a war that no longer has a clean side to stand on.

The Story

Mercury: the Reaper besieged

The war that the hero Darrow of Lykos started is going badly. Once a Red miner, remade into a Gold to destroy the Society from within, Darrow is known across the worlds as the Reaper. He has been stripped of his rank as the Republic's supreme commander, and the army that still follows him, the Free Legions, is marooned on Mercury. Above them the Republic's fleet has been destroyed. The enemy who destroyed it is Atalantia au Grimmus, the Dictator of the Society Remnant, the last daughter of the feared Ash Lord, and she now has the planet under siege.

Darrow arrives on Mercury three weeks after leaving Venus, with a small team of his Howlers, and his first act is a rescue. Orion xe Aquarii, the Blue commander who has flown for him since the earliest days of the rising, has been a prisoner of Atlas au Raa, the Gold known as the Fear Knight, and she has been tortured. Darrow gets her out, and he needs her badly, because he has a plan that only she can carry out. Mercury was made habitable long ago by vast terraforming machines, and those machines can still shape the weather. When Atalantia's legions drop onto the planet, Darrow means to greet them with storms of a size no army has ever faced.

It is a desperate idea from a desperate man, and the Mercury chapters are about what such a weapon costs: the soldiers it is aimed at, the Free Legions standing beneath the same sky, and the millions of civilians who never asked to live on a battlefield. Around Darrow stand the people he trusts most, among them his niece and lancer Rhonna, the giant Gold officer Thraxa au Telemanus, the ace pilot Colloway xe Char, his second in command Cadus Harnassus, and young Alexandar au Arcos, grandson and heir of the legendary Lorn au Arcos. Much of the fighting turns on the resource-rich city of Heliopolis and a brutal crossing of the desert called the Ladon Waste.

The heir in the enemy camp

On the other side of the lines is Lysander au Lune, grandson and heir of Octavia au Lune, the Sovereign whom Darrow killed ten years earlier. Lysander has come back from a long exile with a proposal for Atalantia: an alliance between her Society Remnant and the Golds of the Rim Dominion, the proud, austere lords of the outer moons. Atalantia agrees, but her price is that Lysander and the Rim warrior Seraphina au Raa fight in the assault on Mercury themselves.

So the last heir of the old order goes down into the storm. What makes his thread compelling is that he is neither a monster nor a fool. He wants the Society restored, and the battle gives him chances to prove himself. Soldiers begin to gather around him: the knight Kalindora au San, the veteran Gray officer Rhone ti Flavinius and his Praetorians. That loyalty makes him a political threat to Atalantia and a rival to his childhood friend Ajax au Grimmus, whose jealousy is dangerous. Lysander has to survive his enemies and his own side at once, and decide what kind of leader the heir of the old order intends to be.

Luna: a republic on trial

Far from the front, on Luna, Darrow's wife Virginia au Augustus is fighting a different kind of battle. She is the Republic's elected Sovereign, the woman readers know as Mustang, and she is trying to persuade the Senate to send help to the Free Legions before Mercury becomes their grave. To get the votes she reaches across the aisle to Dancer O'Faran, Darrow's old mentor from the Sons of Ares, who now leads the Vox Populi, the faction most opposed to her.

It is a fragile alliance, and it is exactly what the Republic's hidden enemies cannot allow. On the eve of the vote, an act of public violence blows the chamber apart, blame is thrown at Virginia, and a mob is turned loose on the capital. A senator named Publius cu Caraval rides the chaos, and behind him is the Syndicate, a criminal empire that has been working in the shadows. Virginia, her spymaster Theodora, the soldier Holiday ti Nakamura, Darrow's best friend Sevro au Barca and his Howlers are suddenly fugitives inside their own government. These chapters play like a political thriller, and they carry one of the book's sharpest warnings: a democracy can be defeated without a single enemy ship in its sky.

Mars: a thief, a refugee and the children

The third front is Mars, and it belongs to the least powerful people in the story. Ephraim ti Horn is a Gray freelancer, a thief for hire who once fought for the Sons of Ares and no longer fights for anyone. He has two children in his keeping who are worth more than any treasure: Pax, the son of Darrow and Virginia, and Electra, the daughter of Sevro and Victra. As this book opens, a shuttle crash delivers Ephraim and both children into the hands of the Obsidians led by Sefi the Quiet, their queen and the sister of the fallen hero Ragnar, who dreams of a homeland for her people on Mars.

Sefi wants something Ephraim has: his partner Volga, a young Obsidian who has spent her life as a hired bodyguard and who matters to Sefi's plans far more than she knows. Ephraim finds himself advising a queen, helping her seize Mars's helium mines from the tycoon Quicksilver, and looking after two frighteningly capable children. Meanwhile a mysterious and far more savage Obsidian warlord, Volsung Fá, arrives from the darkness beyond the planets with a horde that never lived under the Society's rule, and Sefi's hold on her people begins to slip.

Volga, for her part, has been taken prisoner along with Lyria of Lagalos, a young Red from Mars whose family was murdered by the terrorist Red Hand. Their captor is Victra au Barca, Sevro's wife, a shipping magnate, a formidable fighter and, at this moment, a heavily pregnant mother who wants her daughter back. When Victra's ship is attacked above Mars, the three women and a strange mercenary called Figment are thrown down onto the planet together and into the territory of the Red Hand and its leader Harmony. Lyria, who has no rank, no training and no powerful friends, has to find out what she is capable of, and what she finds is the closest thing the book has to hope.

Where it leaves you

These threads do not stay apart. Decisions made on Luna decide who lives on Mercury; what happens on Mars reaches into the palaces of the mighty; and the question of who will rule the worlds is far more open at the end than at the beginning. How any of it turns out is for the reader to discover. It is enough to say that Brown does not protect his characters, and that the book earns its name.

What It's Really About

What comes after the revolution. The first trilogy was about tearing down a tyranny. This one is about the much harder work of replacing it. The Republic has a Senate, factions and votes, and all of those things can be turned against it by people patient enough to use them.

The price of a necessary evil. Darrow has always believed the ends could justify his means. On Mercury he reaches for a weapon that cannot tell soldier from civilian, and the book makes him, and the reader, look squarely at the result.

The enemy's point of view. By giving so much of the story to Lysander, Brown refuses the comfort of a faceless foe. The heir of the old order is capable, brave enough to win the loyalty of hardened soldiers, and set on restoring what Darrow destroyed, which makes him far more dangerous than a villain who knows he is one.

Inheritance. Nearly every thread turns on children and heirs: Pax and Electra, Lysander and the grandmother whose legacy he carries, Ajax and his terrible parents, Volga and the queen who needs her. The book keeps asking what one generation's wars do to the next.

Small people in a large war. Lyria and Ephraim hold no armies. Their chapters show the war from the ground, where it is felt most, and suggest that courage from unimportant people can matter as much as strategy from great ones.

Readers come to this series for scale, speed and consequences, and this is the volume that pushes all three furthest: several planets, several wars and a cast in which no one is safe.

Who Should Read It

This is a book for readers who are already deep in the saga: it begins immediately after Iron Gold and assumes you know the original trilogy, so it is not a place to start. It will reward anyone who likes military science fiction with real political weight, stories told from several sides of a conflict, and an author willing to let his heroes fail. It is also, by design, the darkest and most violent entry so far, so come prepared for cruelty, loss and an ending that sends you straight to the next book, Light Bringer.

This has been a summary of Dark Age by Pierce Brown, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST.