Summary: Morning Star

The GIST

Morning Star by Pierce Brown is the third and final novel of the original Red Rising trilogy, following Red Rising (2014) and Golden Son (2015). It is science fiction on the grandest scale: a civil war that spreads across the whole solar system, told in the vivid first-person voice of one man who was born at the bottom of a rigid hierarchy and remade to destroy it from within. Published by Del Rey on February 9, 2016, it debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list, reached number one on USA Today's list and won the Goodreads Choice Award for science fiction. Brown called it a more ambitious book than either of its predecessors, and he announced a sequel trilogy, beginning with Iron Gold, the same month it came out.

The book matters because it has to pay off two volumes of scheming, betrayal and loss, and many critics say that it does. Kirkus Reviews called it an "ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga" and compared its layered universe to Frank Herbert's Dune. Entertainment Weekly called it "devastating and inspiring." It is a violent, fast, often funny book about what it costs to tear down a world, and what kind of person you have to be to build a better one afterward.

The Story

A world sorted by Color

In Brown's future, humanity lives across the planets and moons of the solar system, and everyone belongs to a Color. The Golds rule, and some of them are held in god-like regard. Beneath them are the others: Silvers such as the richest man in the Society, Gray legionnaires, Pinks who serve as valets, Obsidians recruited as slave warriors, and, lowest of the low, the Reds, who work the mines. The whole arrangement is called the Society, and at its head sits the Sovereign, Octavia au Lune, who has ruled for sixty years and staunchly believes the Color system is what brings mankind its prosperity.

Darrow began as a Red, a young Helldiver in the mining colony of Lykos beneath the surface of Mars. The Golds executed his wife by hanging and kept his people enslaved. He was physically remade into a Gold so that he could infiltrate the ruling class on behalf of the rebellion begun by the Sons of Ares. Over two books he emerged the victor of the Golds' Academy, rose to become a warlord known as the Reaper, and waited for the moment to turn on his masters.

Into the dark

That moment was stolen from him. At the end of Golden Son, at the feast meant to celebrate his victory, Darrow was betrayed, most painfully by his friend Roque au Fabii, known as the Poet of Deimos. His true origin was exposed, a massacre followed, and he fell into the hands of Adrius au Augustus, the sociopathic Gold known as the Jackal.

Morning Star opens a year later, and the Reaper is gone. Darrow has spent three months under torture and nine more held in a dark box. He is drained in body and close to broken in spirit, and under torture he has given up his home colony of Lykos. Outside, the war has gone on without him. A double has been publicly executed in his place. His best friend, the foulmouthed Sevro au Barca, has become Ares and publicly revealed that Darrow was a Red all along, a revelation that sets off riots and rebellion among the low Colors across the system. Roque now commands the Sovereign's Sword Armada. And Virginia au Augustus, called Mustang, the Jackal's twin sister and the woman Darrow loves, has broken away with her own forces and joined the rebellious Golds of the outer moons.

Just as the Jackal prepares to hand Darrow over to be dissected, help arrives from an unlikely place. Two soldiers in the Sovereign's own guard, the siblings Holiday and Trigg, are secretly working for the Sons of Ares. They pull Darrow out and, on the way, discover that Victra au Julii, his loyal Gold lieutenant, is alive in the same captivity after a year of torture of her own. The escape is desperate and costly, and it sets the tone for everything that follows: nothing in this book is won cheaply.

Taking back the Rising

Rescue is only the first step. Darrow has to recover and, hardest of all, remember why he should fight at all. The hopes and expectations that people have pinned on him feel crushing. What he finds among the rebels, whose secret hideout is the city of Tinos, troubles him further. Under Sevro, the Sons of Ares have turned to terrorist tactics such as bombing. His methods are vicious and not very effective, and the Jackal has learned to exploit them, committing acts of terror of his own and letting the rebels take the blame. The movement has lost its financial backing and has failed again and again to ally itself with the other factions in rebellion.

Matters come to a head during an attempt on Phobos to kidnap Quicksilver, the richest man in the Society and the owner of the helium-3 refineries there. The kidnapping blunders into a peace negotiation, scatters old enemies and old loves in every direction, and turns up surprises about who has really been behind the rebellion. In its aftermath Darrow and Sevro finally fight it out. Darrow takes command of the Rising not just by beating his friend but by reminding him how they became friends in the first place.

Mustang comes to find him soon after. She will stand with the Rising, but on a condition that hangs over the rest of the book: Darrow must prove that he is not just another tyrant, and that he is someone who can rebuild from the ashes of the Society.

The gods of the ice

To fight the Society's fleets, the Rising needs an army, and Darrow knows where one might be found. The Obsidians live in tribes at the icy southern pole of Mars, kept deliberately in the dark and taught to worship the Golds as gods. With Mustang, Holiday and his loyal Obsidian friend Ragnar Volarus, who has learned the truth and longs to share it with his people, Darrow sets out to recruit them, followed by two of the Sovereign's knights: Cassius au Bellona, who shares a deep mutual hatred with Darrow, and Aja au Grimmus, the Sovereign's bodyguard and the most dangerous sword in the book.

Among the Valkyries, Ragnar's tribe, they meet his sister Sefi the Quiet, bound by an oath of silence, and their mother, Queen Alia Snowsparrow, whose devotion to the gods is famous. The journey becomes a confrontation between a people and the lie they have been raised on. The Obsidians also give Darrow the name that gives the book its title. "They call me the Morning Star," he says. "That star by which griffin-riders and travelers navigate the wastes in the dark months of winter."

Jupiter, and the road to Luna

From there the war widens. A captured enemy reveals that a secret stockpile of planet-killing nuclear bombs has been stolen, and suspicion falls on the Jackal. Darrow sends the Rising's fleet out to Jupiter to seek an alliance with the breakaway Golds of the Rim and their appointed leader, Romulus au Raa. To get it he must outmaneuver Roque, who has been invited to the same table, and he does not scruple to lie. What follows is a fleet battle in which Darrow sacrifices one of his own ships to storm the flagship of the man who betrayed him.

Beyond Jupiter lies the capital of the Society: Luna, where the Sovereign, her bodyguard Aja, the supreme fleet commander known as the Ash Lord and the Jackal are all waiting. How that final reckoning plays out, and who is still standing when it does, is for the reader to discover. One reviewer says the last few chapters hold several surprises, some infuriating and some awesome.

What It's Really About

Building, not just breaking. Darrow has spent two books rising as a warlord. Here he has to become something harder. "I can be a builder, not just a destroyer," he says, and the whole novel tests that claim. He refuses to act like a terrorist, as Sevro did while in command, and he goes to great lengths to prove that he is not another destroyer.

Justice versus vengeance. Both sides want revenge. Victra's only motive at first is revenge on the half-sister who shot her, and Darrow has to calm the lower Colors' desire for vengeance on the Golds, and the Golds' on them. One line from the book states the answer: "Justice isn't about fixing the past, it's about fixing the future. We're not fighting for the dead. We're fighting for the living. And for those who aren't yet born."

The cost of freedom. The book never pretends that war is clean. "Slavery is not peace. Freedom is peace. And until we have that, it is our duty to make war," runs another line. Entertainment Weekly wrote that "the violence here is grimmer, its humor more unsettling, its forgiveness rarer, its casualties more sickening."

False gods. The Obsidian storyline dramatizes what happens when a people discover that the beings they worship are mortal. One reviewer notes that Ragnar's name echoes Ragnarok, the final battle of Scandinavian mythology that ends in the death of the gods, after which the world is reborn.

Friendship and second chances. For all the bloodshed, reviewers single out the friendship between Darrow and Sevro, the rocky relationship between Darrow and Mustang, and Darrow's continued belief in people and in second chances. Brown has said Victra was his favorite character to write because she "is dark and broken...but she finds her way back."

Reviewers praise the sheer scale, from the ice of the Obsidians' home to the shipyards of Ganymede, and the way Brown withholds Darrow's plans until just the right moment. Sevro's humor gives a heavy book some levity. Not everyone is fully won over. Tor.com called it the trilogy's Return of the Jedi and said the ending absolutely satisfies, while noting flaws in pacing. NPR found it heavy on exposition, and The Book Smugglers felt it fell short of Golden Son, citing battle fatigue and a lack of true uncertainty. Another reviewer finds the prose melodramatic and the finale rushed. Even those doubters grant that the story is complete.

Who Should Read It

This is for anyone who has read Red Rising and Golden Son and needs to know how it ends; newcomers should start at the beginning, since one critic noted it is not very accessible to new readers. It will reward fans of big space opera who enjoy the comparisons critics have drawn to Dune and Star Wars, readers of revolution stories like The Hunger Games, and anyone who likes loyal, damaged, wisecracking characters fighting for something greater than themselves. Be ready for gore and real heartbreak.

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