In a dystopia separated into classes by color, reds sit at the bottom, mining for the rest of the world while Golds rule over them all. Classes in between make up the entertainers, police officers, workers, laymen, etc.
When he discovers the world has been stacked against him and his wife is brutally ripped away, Darrow is thrust into the world of revolutionaries where he is faced with a reality he cannot even fathom.
With revenge, conquest, life, death, and renewal in the balance, Darrow must choose his friends, enemies, and allies while keeping his identity and ambitions carefully tucked away in a society of Golds.
Although I disagree with how the author chose to revel in darkness for this story, it did keep me invested in Darrow and left me wanting to see how he would overcome the next challenge. If you can get past the sexual content, gore, and Darrow’s inability to keep his eyes off women after his wife, Eo, dies, this could be a very entertaining read.
Darrow begins in the bowels of Mars, carving through burning rock as a helldiver, the spec ops of miners. With Eo in mind, he suffers a burn to win the competition that comes with extra resources like food and medical supplies. At the ceremony, the rewards are unfairly given to a different tribe and Darrow is reminded of the way his father was unfairly executed for going on strike and doing the forbidden dance.
Eo steals him away to a forbidden, yet beautiful chamber of the underworld. There, she tries to convince him to start an uprising with the respect and skills he's garnered as a helldiver, but Darrow isn't ready to believe he's in slavery. He would prefer to believe his hard work is preparing Mars for the rest of humanity. So, they enjoy the artificial sunset and have a fade-to-black scene.
Of course, the authorities catch the couple and make an example of them. They whip both Darrow and Eo until Eo begins to sing the forbidden song, sealing her fate. Not only is she hung, but Darrow is forced to pull her feet to end her suffering—the same thing he hated his uncle for doing to his father.
Grief-stricken, Darrow commits another "forbidden" crime—he buries Eo and is subsequently executed for it. Well, kind of. His uncle drugs him and fakes pulling his legs. The already-active uprising pulls him out of his little slice of hell and turns out to be full of jerks. Somehow, Darrow grows fond of the women who starts by saying his dead wife and father were only good for radicalizing him. I promise you, if Sam died for something he believed in and that was the first thing someone said about him, "fondness" would be the furthest emotion from the situation.
Nevertheless, when shown the extravagant way the higher colors live, completely oblivious to his suffering and Eo’s pain, Darrow snaps from grief to rage. He agrees to do anything to crumble the empire that crushed Eo’s dreams. He swears to beat a rigged game.
Darrow undergoes a training montage. As his body is being morphed into the elite class of golds and his mind reshaped, Darrow meets a girl (of course, she’s more beautiful than Eo, because apparently, every woman is) who is enslaved to the man recarving his flesh and bones. When the transformation is complete, he threatens the carver and gets the girl released from her bondage.
A new man—one he cannot stand in the mirror—Darrow embarks on his journey. He aces his tests, enters the school of elites, and finds a new game he’s supposed to lose. The school is just a glorified indoctrination scheme where young golds are forced to undergo brutalizing each other into submission, death, or disgrace. This year, the governor who ordered Eo’s death has a son (the jackal) competing and his son is supposed to win.
Over Darrow’s dead body.
I have to say, I related to Darrow’s single-mindedness on a spiritual level.
So, Darrow commits himself to becoming not only a just leader, but one even the golds will admire. Just as he’s gaining traction, the jackal gets a hold of a video of Darrow brutally killing his strongest ally’s brother in the culling (a death match between two golds intended to cull the weak).
His ally forces a duel and leaves Darrow for dead. An enemy he spared finds him and keeps him alive. When she (you guessed it. She’s prettier than Eo was) grows ill, just as he’s recuperated, Darrow forces the proctors to give him medicine for her. This is the beginning of his big scheme.
Darrow uses his new ally and her scepter to free slaves who will work with him for a certain amount of raids. He builds an army that takes back his house from the enemy he once called a brother. A feud is forged.
With his scepter and an army of people invested in his success and their future, Darrow leads the assault on the Jackal. The proctors do everything in their power to make him lose, but he turns it on their heads, stealing another proctor’s armor and killing another.
Though the Jackal escapes with one less hand, the charge on Olympus (the proctor’s living quarters in the sky) is a complete success.
Well…
Turns out, that girl who saved him is the governor's daughter, and he just sent her with half his army straight to her brother. As Darrow readies for her and the Jackal’s assault, she floats back with her brother completely bound and rendered helpless.
Darrow wins.
This leaves him with one more choice. Should he pick a beneficiary with fewer resources but ties back to his cult of revolutionaries, or the man with all the strings: the governor? In the end, he accepts the governor's offer and swears his allegiance.
As I wrote above, Red Rising was incredibly entertaining if you can get past the sex, violence, and gore (and how pretty every woman was after she died). I couldn't. I won't be reading the rest even though I'd like to see Darrow use loyalty, justice, and servant leadership to change the empire.
