Red Rising.

Author: Pierce Brown

Name of the book: Red Rising

Editorial: Hodder and Stoughton

Number of pages: 382 pages soft cover

Publication date: 2014

My Grade: 9

My Summary: “The earth is dying. Darrow is a HellDriver from Lykos, Mars, and he is a Red; he is married and aged 16 years old. He lives with his mother, brother and the family of his brother. He lives a simple life; he is in love with his beautiful and dreamer wife Eo. They work at the mines as in there is Helium-3 which is very important for the survival of the other habitants in the other planets. Or so they think.

One night his wife has a surprise for him for an event that happens in the mines, and the result for the surprise they get caught by some guardians that belong to the Golds, which are the group that leads society, and the Reds are on the lowest part. As punishment they both got to be lashed in public, but Eo suddenly starts singing the song, a song that it’s forbidden, which leads to her being executed by being hung in front of everyone, and since in Mars there is no gravity, the loved one of the person being executed as to take their feet and push them in order to break the neck, before they hung her, she ask her sister to go there since she has something she wants to say, then they proceed with the execution and the main character has to help execute his wife.

After that Darrow decides to bury his wife, which also is not allowed. Once he has buried her, then goes back home, stays a little while with his brother, mother, uncle and a few more people, and then, he kills himself, with the help, only for the feet part, of his Uncle.

Next thing we know is that Darrow wakes up in a dark place, and old mine, in there he finds a group of people called The Sons of Ares, that fights to destroy the order that the society has, with Golds at the top and the other colours beneath, they want to fight against all the lies that this society has. Darrow at first doesn’t want anything to do with that, but the Sons show him something that makes him change his mind, they show him a city of Golds that live in Mars, when since the beginning, we, and the characters that live in Mars think that they are the only ones living there, that it’s inhabitable for the other ones and they have to work in the mines to help the other colours survive and help them prepare for when they arrive at Mars, so in fact it’s all a lie. This plus the fact that it was Eo’s plan or him to be part of this, makes him get involve with the plan of the rebels.

And the plan is to change him, to make him a Gold, transform his bone structure, his DNA, train him to talk like them, to act like them, educate him like one of them so he can infiltrate in the society and be a weapon to fight them.

After huge number of operations, few months of training and educating him with the help of Mickey, the one who operates on him, Matteo, a Pink, trained to give pleasure, is the one who teaches Darrow culture and education and also how the Gold talk and act. Harmony, a girl who fights for the Sons of Ares trains him to fight, lastly, Dancer, which leads this group of rebels.

After a few months of more training, a new identity, but the same name, is time for Darrow to enter in the society, and the first step is to the Institute, in which to be accepted, he has to do a few tests. He is in. But once he is in, he gets to meet a few students; in particular he meets a Gold named Julian, the first one to be nice with him, then he meets his brother Cassius and a few more.

Then after a few tests and one encounter with Board of Quality Control, he has to go through the last task, which is a fight with one of the other students, to death. And the student paired with him is none other than Julian, the guy that he met before. And in order to get truly at the Institute, he kills him.

Next thing we know is that the get sorted in different houses, House of Mars, House of Apollo, etc. Darrow goes to House Mars. They are distributed in different tables; each person finds his name on a chair of the table of the House he has been sorted in. Darrow finds himself in Mars with Cassius, Julian’s brother, Roque, Servo, Lea and a few more other characters that we will be getting to know. The House has a Proctor called Fitchner, who would be someone that leads them from the outside, who give them medicines if need, or many more things.

In this part of the book we find the new group unite and fight the other houses in order to win the ultimate prize which is to have the opportunity to belong to the richest families.

In this part of the book we see Darrow go through different phases, the first realizing that the group of Mars is divided between Titus and the ones who follow him, after a brutal show of dominance, and the group of people that follows Darrow. So, In order to remove the tyrannous Titus from power, Darrow allies with Antonia another Gold that belongs to House Mars but was with Titus, and reveals their castle's location to House Minerva, led by a girl called Virginia "Mustang" au Augustus, but in the first pages we don’t know Mustang’s true identity. Mustang and her troops, mounted and equipped, take Mars's castle, imprisoning Titus. But Sevro rescues Darrow and Cassius, and helps them take Minerva's standard, to trade back for their fortress. Sevro becomes Darrow's most loyal troop, and leads the "Howlers", a group of lowDrafts who dress in wolfskins. Mustang reveals the existence of a great enemy, The Jackal (later known to be Adrius au Augustus, the ArchGovernor's son and Mustang's twin brother, for whom the Proctors are cheating). Darrow becomes House Mars's leader.

While talking to the captive Titus, Darrow discovers he is another Red disguised as a Gold, and he finds himself forced to allow Cassius to kill him since Titus shamed Cassius when he peed on him, and that lead to his troops' image of him as a flawed leader. He makes an alliance with House Diana to capture House Minerva's castle and troops, simultaneously defeating Minerva's warrior Pax au Telemanus and enslaving House Diana after their betrayal. However, Tamara, Diana's Primus/leader is killed by her housemate Tactus au Rath, and Darrow lets Mustang go rather than giving her up to Vixus au Sarna, a sadistic former ally of Titus.

Antonia, along with Vixus and Cassandra (another former ally of Titus), betrays Darrow and tries to kill him for the Jackal, but is foiled when Darrow discovers their plan. Instead, Antonia and the others, kill Lea in the process and wound with gravity Roque who was with her at the moment. Cassius finds out thanks to the Jackal's lieutenant Lilath that Darrow was the one to kill Julian, ater Lilath gave Cassius a hologram of Darrow killing Julian, and challenges him to a duel. He defeats Darrow easily and leaves him to die, taking over as Primus of House Mars. But in a turn of events, Darrow is rescued and nursed by Mustang, who has been in hiding since the fall of House Minerva. The two form an alliance and recruit wandering Oathbreakers, slaves who chose to disobey orders and be Shamed, to their army and free them, with the aim of building an army of loyal friends instead of slaves and later on the Howlers will also join. They begin by showing House Mars that Darrow is still alive by freeing some of their slaves, including Pax, and taking others like Tactus, and then proceed to take House Ceres's fortress and all of their troops as slaves. After this, Fitchner and Darrow meet at some point were Mustang is ill, the first ends up revealing to Darrow that the Proctors are involved in some way for the Jackal's success. Also it is at this point of the book that Darrow learns that Fitchner is in fact Sevro’s father.

The army then takes House Jupiter's fortress with little resistance due to their siege at Mars, and meets Lucian a guy that seems shy at the beginning, meanwhile Mustang and some other troops are out there fighting some troops. After her comeback, is revealed quickly that Lucian is the Jackal in disguise. Darrow then tests him to see whether he would cut off his hand to leave as it was previously said in the book that he killed and ate human flesh in order to survive, and so he does in fact cut his own hand in order to leave, but then he kills Pax with the help of the corrupt Proctors. Which leads Darrow and the others to chase after them, and during the chase, Darrow kills Proctor Apollo, and upon learning that they had kidnapped Mustang. Then Darrow storms the floating residence of the Proctors, Mount Olympus, with his army and captures all of them, defeating Proctor Jupiter in the process. He then sends Mustang to find and capture the Jackal, but while debatingall that had happened learns from Fitchner that she is actually his twin sister. Expecting a betrayal, Darrow returns to House Mars with advanced weaponry from Olympus's armory to prepare to fight the combined might of the Augustus twins. However, Mustang returns with the captured Jackal and also she brings him naked, remaining loyal to Darrow, and so with that Darrow wins.

Cassius, knowing that he is alive, declares a blood feud with Darrow over Julian's death. After his victory a few ships get down to where all the action happened, and Nero au Augustus explains to Darrow that he wants him on his house, to have him as a soldier. So Darrow is required to choose a patron to sponsor his future, and becomes a lancer for House Augustus and the ArchGovernor, in order to attend the Academy for starship fleet command and to become closer to his enemy.

http://red-rising.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Rising_(novel)# some information was taken from this web as I wanted to have as much information as possible.

My opinion: I loved this book, and at first I didn’t want to read it as one critic said it was like The Hunger Games. I thought ogh no more of that no, but then I eventually come across with the book and when I started reading it, it was brutal, I mean in the first 50 pages the protagonist has to help in the execution off his wife. I mean, that was amazing, starting with the action from the beginning. Then all that training and all those changes that the main character suffers and is put through I think its brilliant on how it doesn’t feel like it’s only been a few weeks and that it took a long time for him to become this new character without losing the Red Darrow. Then at the Institute I liked some of the characters, at first I was very enthusiastic of the friendship between Cassius, Roque and Darrow, and when they call each other brothers I am like estatic, but ofcourse in every good book nothing is what it seems, and when the friendship breaks I realize that one o the best characters in the book was Sevro. He had nothing, everyone judged him, and still, he proved time after time of his loyalty. And then the Howlers are pretty hilarious too. And as for the development of the relationship between Mustang and Darrow, I am like okay with it, ad talking of this, I don’t like Eo, I mean yea, she is young, a dreamer, someone who wants a better world and all of that but leaving her husband with a burden like that asking him to fight when he doesn’t even want to do anything more apart from being a HellDriver… I don’t know maybe it’s because what we will discover on the next books, but from now I think she is a bit selfish.

The plot twist with Fitchner being Sevro’s father and Mustang and the Jackal being twins and them being the sons of Nero au Augustus, the man who got Eo executed was like it all stays in the same circle and of course the irony of Darrow starting to have feelings for her is brilliant.

Then we have all the fighting, planning, treasons, and more in the battle o the Houses, which are spectacular, I mean if we think of the group that started and how divided it ended, it’s amazing. And how many of them died or become slaves making them full off shame for their families, it’s pretty brutal to be honest.

So yeah over all, I loved it, like really loved it. Amazing start for a trilogy.

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