Sagas & Sass began covering the Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown in September 2022; this is our summary of book 1 – Red Rising – as it was written to introduce Sagas & Sass episodes 51, 52, and 53.
AHOY! SPOILERS AHEAD!
There’s nothing like diving into a new series, and with Red Rising we’re helldiving in with Darrow as he rides a clawDrill deep below the surface of Mars, mining the helium-3 that is supposedly being used to terraform that planet.
Darrow is a Red, one of many Colors in this far-future Society, described by the Sovereign as brave pioneers, strongest of the human breed, who sacrifice to pave the way for other Colors by toiling to make Mars ready for them.
As the Helldiver of Lykos, Darrow is a cocksure teen bent on winning the Laurel for his clan, the Lambdas. The Gammas always win the this prize, which is supposedly based on mining the most helium-3 and which gets them extra food, medicine, and other treats…all things that Darrow wants for his wife, Eo, who is clearly the light of his life.
So Darrow kinda stupidly believes that taking a huge risk during his mining shift and making a massive helium-3 pull will finally allow Lambda to win the Laurel, although the older, wiser men on his crew – and even his young wife – all know better. The Laurel once again goes to Gamma, and as a consolation prize Eo takes Darrow to visit a secret garden used by the Grays who guard the mining colony.
While they have a wonderful night together makin’ lurve under the stars, it turns out to be their last night. The Grays catch them exiting the garden, and both Darrow and Eo are subjected to a lashing…only Eo interrupts hers by singing “The Forbidden Song”, which immediately turns her already terrible punishment into a death sentence.
Forced to watch his wife hang, Darrow decides he wants to follow her to the grave. The law says that criminals can’t be buried – their bodies hang as a warning in the township until the flesh has rotted away, and then their bones are removed and ground to dust. But Darrow cuts Eo’s body down and buries her in the garden, and is then subjected to his own hanging.
Luckily for Darrow, his Uncle Narol gave him a special drink prior to the hanging to slow his heartbeat, faked pulling his feet – which is necessary to relieve suffering in Mars’s low gravity – and then was able to turn off the security cameras to drag Darrow down and “bury” him. So while Darrow wakes up in a grave, he does in fact WAKE UP, and is immediately picked up by a Red woman named Harmony and brought to Dancer, also a Red and clearly high up in the Sons of Ares chain of command.
Who are the Sons of Ares, you ask? Why, they’re the so-called terrorist group that has been blamed for bombings but who also hacked the HC – which is essentially the Society’s version of Fox News – to broadcast Eo’s martyrdom…and now they want to recruit Darrow. He’s more than a little hesitant at first…until Dancer takes him on a long elevator ride that deposits them in a penthouse that has a view of the city…because it turns out that Mars has been habitable for hundreds of years, and ya know, why would anyone tell the Reds who slave away mining the helium-3 the Society needs for fuel that they’ve been lied to all this time?
Anyway, seeing the final product of his people’s labors – which they’re obviously not getting to enjoy – convinces Darrow to agree that he will help the Sons of Ares…and his help comes in the form of giving up his entire self, physically at least – because Dancer hires a Violet named Mickey to make Darrow a Gold!
This process is called “carving” and involves rebuilding Darrow’s entire body, even down to his bone density. Darrow pretty much only survives it because he previously survived a pitviper bite, which made his heart stronger. Oh, and while he sleeps he’s also fed hundreds of years of history, literature, science, and more – but that’s not all! Eventually a Pink named Matteo is brought in to train him in dance, etiquette, and speech.
Finally, Darrow is as ready as he’ll ever be to take the admittance test for the Gold Institute on Mars. He does so well that the Board of Quality Control pays him a visit, but he fools them too, and so his real mission finally begins…
On his way to the Institute Darrow shares a shuttle with a rude little Gold named Sevro and a much nicer and more cultured Gold named Julian, who happens to be the brother of a young man named Cassius that Darrow had a meet-cute with on testing day. They are the sons of an Imperator – aka a really important dude.
As it turns out, once at the Institute the students are sorted into Houses and Darrow ends up in House Mars along with Sevro, Julian, and Cassius, among others. A welcome feast is held and everyone goes to sleep well-fed and presumably excited for the future…until they are all dragged out of their beds, stripped naked, beaten, and then tossed two to a room and told only one of them can come out alive.
Unfortunately for Julian, he is paired with Darrow, and while Darrow hates what he has to do, he also understands that he has no choice. He kills the other boy, crying as he does so, and is left cradling the body of this kind person and finally beginning to understand what the Institute REALLY is – a culling ground.
Dun dun DUNNNNNN!
Darrow realizes that he has to bear the guilt of what he did and keep on keeping on…so he leaves his lonely room and makes his way through the Medieval-style castle that is home to House Mars. He encounters other students, and eventually they all gather in the dining hall, where they are soon met by Fitchner, the House Mars Proctor. Fitchner explains the game – first, students want to be Primus of their House, and then they want to beat all of the other Houses…which they can do by using their House Standard – a scepter of sorts – to make slaves of the other students.
Cool motive, still slavery.
And here Darrow thought they would be studying in classrooms…but nope, that’s not how fame and power are won in THIS Society. Hmmm…using power and status to make others do your bidding…sounds strangely familiar…
The very next morning Fitchner takes them on a tour of their territory, ending at the very edge of it, which butts up to that of House Ceres. They watch as a giant picnic is set out in the fields before them, and Darrow and Cassius decide to race down to the Hunger Games Cornucopia bounty. Because of course they do!
Buuut obviously It’s a Trap! The House Ceres students are hiding in the grass and a fight ensues – one which Darrow and Cassius pretty easily win, gaining a good bit of food and even some weapons…including a reaper’s scythe that Darrow takes for his own, because it reminds him of his slingBlade from the mines.
So yeah, things start off fairly well for House Mars, but they quickly devolve, as the members argue about what to do next and refuse to rally behind any one leader. They end up divided into their own little tribes, and while the one led by Titus – a big angry brute of a Gold – is the first to take a slave, Darrow’s little crew – which includes Cassius, a slim boy named Roque who Darrow calls a poet, and two girls named Lea and Quinn, among others – is the one that finds a small cache of food and matches.
This cache allows them to feed themselves while Titus’s group goes hungry, becoming more and more desperate and nasty as the days tick by. The Proctors do nothing as things become more and more violent, and finally Darrow comes up with a plan to do something since ya know, apparently no one else will.
The plan – which involves allying with a bitchy girl named Antonia (who is clearly her own sort of trouble) – hits a roadblock right out of the gate. Titus captures Quinn and sends Darrow & Co. her EAR, because of COURSE this asshole is all about maiming people – even members of his own House. We also learn that Titus has likely been assaulting the slaves he’s taken – with heavy implications of sexual assault, to boot. Absolute opposite of cool motive, obviously fucked up.
Now, Cassius could – and clearly SHOULD – have waited for Darrow and Roque to come back around before rushing off to rescue his ‘damsel in distress’…but he didn’t, and in return earns himself a beat down and a circle piss.
Yes, you heard that right – Titus and some of his tribe surround Cassius and PEE on him. Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool
Getting Quinn back is imperative, so they go ahead with the next step of Darrow’s plan…which, by the way, involves using another House – in this case Minerva – to storm the Mars Castle so that they can win it back from Titus. Not that this goes exactly as planned, either! In fact, the only reason Darrow and Cassius don’t end up captured by Mustang, the House Minerva Primus, is because their fellow House Mars member Sevro comes to their aid.
You see, Sevro has been out and about as a tribe of one, killing wolves and keeping an eye on things from afar. But this kicks off his alliance and friendship with Darrow, and that’s a really, really good thing because all this time Sevro has been the only one who truly seems to know what is going on. Shoot, he even thought to sneak into the Mars Castle, steal the standard, and bury it in the woods so that the Minervans wouldn’t get ahold of it!
Honestly at this point Sevro is clearly the MVP and we kinda wonder why he wants to bother with Darrow at all, but hey, lucky Darrow, we guess…especially as he, Sevro, and Cassius then fairly easily break into Minerva’s castle and steal their cook, some of their horses…and that coveted Standard, which they cart back to the Mars Castle for a REAL clash with House Minerva.
This clash actually ends with negotiations, as Darrow wants to trade the Minervan standard for the Mars Castle and everyone in it. Mustang wants to keep Titus to ensure that justice is meted out, but Darrow promised that job to Cassius…because oh by the way Cassius thinks it was TITUS who killed Julian, a conclusion he sort of came to on his own but one which Darrow helped cement.
So Minerva gets their standard back, Mars gets their castle back, and Titus is found in the dungeons, having already been beaten after the Minervans found the mistreated slave girls in his tower. Darrow confronts him about what he did, but Titus has NO RAGRATS and even goes off on a tangent about he only did what was done to “her” and that he was doing to “their daughters” what was done to “her”…and in the midst of this rant, he lets slip a single telling word: Bloodydamn.
And it’s with that word that Darrow realizes that he is not the lone carved Red at the Institute – clearly Titus is a Red, too! Far from being relieved, Darrow knows that Titus is a mad dog who must be put down before he really slips up and reveals who he is, likely putting Darrow and many others in danger.
Everyone – including Darrow’s friends and even the Proctors – is totally okay with Darrow getting rid of Titus for good and all, though Darrow’s buddies don’t agree with him letting Cassius do the deed. Still, what’s done is done, and then it’s time for another alliance – and this time it’s Darrow and Sevro who hike out to find House Diana and offer them a deal – help Mars take Minerva, and Mars will help Diana take Ceres.
Despite the snide comments and threats from a Diana student named Tactus, their Primus agrees and sure enough they are able to take the Minervans’ castle…with the help of a distraction from Darrow, who challenges a Minervan named Pax to a duel, and with the use of a bunch of dead horses…
Yes, you heard that right: dead. horses. Because a group of Mars and Diana students are sewn up into the horses’ bellies and burst out at just the right time.
I’m sure there’s a horse joke here, but moving on…Mustang (the person, of course) escapes, and House Diana does in fact attempt to backstab Mars by locking them out of Minerva’s castle, but fails because Sevro is inside with them and wreaks havoc on their food and water supplies, among other things. Eventually the members of House Diana try to make a break for it, but are caught, and so all’s well that ends well…
Orrrr not, because then Lilath, a strange scary girl from House Pluto, shows up to offer Cassius a deal – take Darrow out, and her Primus, the Jackal, will give him a whollleee buncha fancy weapons. Cassius refuses, but pockets a little pouch that she gives him…a pouch that Darrow then asks Sevro to, err, confiscate for him.
At this point Darrow should be Primus of House Mars, but before the honorifics can be bestowed, he is lured out of the castle by Antonia and her little band, who lay a trap for him involving his friends Roque and Lea. Lea is killed, Roque goes missing, but Darrow skirts the trap…only to end up in a second one, because Cassius figured out that Sevro was trying to steal the aforementioned pouch!
Obviously this made Cassius even MORE curious about what it contained – which was a holo recording, and he watched said recording, and now he knows that it was DARROW who killed Julian in the Passage. So back to this second trap: Cassius lures Darrow out of the castle by claiming they’ve found Roque, then confronts Darrow and challenges him to a duel. And Cassius being a god among Golds at this above anything else, the duel is over pretty quickly and Darrow is left bleeding out in the mud from a big ol’ gut wound.
Talk about a short-lived win.
At this point a lot of people have already died, and people will surely continue to die, but not surprisingly, it’s NOT Darrow’s time yet. In fact, he’s saved by none other than Mustang, and they hide in the north woods as Darrow recovers, takin’ down wolfpacks and discussing strategy as, ya know, teenagers are wont to do. (Well, in this world, at least).
Unfortunately Mustang becomes ill, to the point where Darrow is afraid he’s going to lose her. One day he goes out to hunt and is met by Fitchner, who not-so-begrudgingly reveals that the Proctors are helping the student named the Jackal – who happens to be the son of the ArchGovernor of Mars – win. Darrow is understandably angry, and presses Fitchner for more information, finding out that the Drafters and other important Golds can watch the students at just about any time thanks to the biometric nanoCams installed in their House rings.
There’s a lot to unpack there because when we say any time, we mean ANY time, but the really important part is that if the students remove their rings, the only cameras that can watch them are the ones in the battlefields.
Stay tuned, because that becomes important later. For now though, Darrow starts forming a plan, because he knows that if a House is destroyed, their Proctor has to leave Olympus. He demands antibiotics for Mustang and also receives a package of his own – a gift from a “friend” that comes in the form of his Pegasus necklace containing Eo’s haemanthus blossom.
So Darrow and Mustang lay a trap for some of the Oathbreakers – students who were enslaved and ran away from their slavers – and use Mustang’s Standard to free them. They soon gather a small group of soldiers and lay yet another trap, this time for House Mars…a trap that allows them to free a group of their slaves, including the ever-lovable PAX! AU! TELEMANUS!…aaand wily, snarky Tactus of House Diana.
But they’re not JUST there to lay traps and free slaves – Darrow also enlists the help of a Minervan girl who is stationed on the walls to sneak into Mars Castle, because he wants to remind his House who he is – the best of them all, someone who can go where he pleases and do what he pleases…which in this case means carving his slingBlade into every door of the keep AND the huge table in the war room. Not that he stops there – he also carves a skull into Cassius’s chair and stabs a knife into its back, all while his soldiers light fire to brush stacked in the shape of a slingBlade on a nearby hillside.
Next up is House Ceres, because Darrow knows that if he has an army he has to feed that army. But while they are able to take this castle, trouble soon brews in the shape of – Color us NOT shocked – Tactus, who attempts to sexually assault one of the girls from House Ceres, claiming that he’s owed this ‘spoil of war’. Darrow knows he can’t do nothing, because the Ceres students are calling for punishment, but he also knows that if he metes it out, he will piss off the House Diana students.
Darrow whips Tactus anyway, but then he shocks EVERYONE by sentencing himself to the same punishment, claiming that he must own their evils with them.
And lucky for him, this ploy WORKS.
So now that Darrow has his troops, he decides it’s time for him to fulfill his promise to Fitchner: that he would find – and take down – House Apollo, whose Proctor is apparently the ring leader of all the cheating.
Darrow & Co. move south through the Institute and eventually meet up with some House Apollo students, at which point Darrow has his army make themselves look as pathetic as possible in hopes of tricking the other House into letting their guard down.
However, while his army roves and bonds, the Proctors continue causing trouble, first by setting their horses loose and then spoiling their food. To top it all off, just as Darrow begins trusting his friends (particularly Mustang) with some of the intel he got from Fitchner, Proctor Apollo uses this attachment to lure him away from camp and into a trap with a giant Carved bear.
But thankfully for Darrow, someone else had laid their own trap, catching the bear and saving him in the process…because that’s right, folks, SEVRO is back! Granted, he’s sporting a limp and missing an eye, but back nonetheless, and he has the Howlers with him…because, loyal pack that they are, when Cassius & Co. told them that the Jackal had captured Darrow they all just straight up abandoned Mars Castle to go searching for him!
At this point Darrow knows there are plans to make – plans that he doesn’t want the Proctors to hear – but he also knows that if he tells the other students what’s what, he risks everything. So as they sit around their fire he suggests that they remove their House rings and talk not as students from different Houses, but as friends…and then he finally lays it all (or…most of it, anyway) out for them.
Step one of their plan is to split the army into units, integrating all the members of different houses together, and then to begin harrowing House Apollo. And then one night they even finally convince Sevro to reveal what he learned while he hunted the Jackal in the mountains – namely that in order to avoid being enslaved during a battle with House Vulcan, the Jackal collapsed the tunnel House Pluto was hiding in, killing more than a few students and stranding himself and the remaining members of his House in the dark, where they had plenty of water…but no food. At least, not until they started eating people.
Suddenly their fireside story time is interrupted as the Proctors descend and surround them with a jamField. Proctor Apollo reveals himself and hands them a jug of wine, which Sevro promptly guzzles as the Proctor tells them they really should all return home. Sevro wanders off to take a piss while Apollo continues to pick them apart, claiming that if Darrow wins at the Institute, it doesn’t actually mean anything for the rest of them.
Of course Darrow and his army tell Apollo to stick it where the sun don’t shine, which angers the Proctor…buuuut not as much as what happens next, because it turns out that this whole thing was a diversion to allow Sevro, Tactus, and some of the others to attack Apollo’s castle without interference from the Proctors. Prime planning, my goodmen!
Without the Proctors being around to cheat on behalf of House Apollo, Darrow and his army win the day, but Fitchner soon pops in to reveal that Proctor Apollo has not in fact left Olympus. Oh, and to try to talk Darrow down from his need to win at like, the whole entire Institute thing…partly because Fitchner is worried about his son’s safety.
Because OHHH YEAHHH BY THE WAY…***SEVRO*** is Fitchner’s son! Seriously, how did none of us – or Darrow – see THAT writing on THAT wall?
But Fitchner isn’t done yet, because he continues to insist that it’s not just about Sevro, that Darrow is overstepping and walking right into a trap – but not one set by the Proctors or the Jackal, one set by Mustang?! This is where Fitchner goes too far though, because while Darrow does promise to take care of Sevro, he then knocks Fitchner unconscious…
After Fitchner’s visit, Darrow sits down with Mustang and actually brings up the idea of her betraying him, something she insists she will not do. They next plan on storming House Jupiter, and while the Proctors will of course know what they’re up to, that’s okay – Darrow wants them to know.
Yet when they arrive at Jupiter’s castle, it seems as if those inside will give up without a fight, despite the fact that surely the Proctors would have warned them. But as this book is plots within plans within plans within plots, of course there’s something else going on here – that being, the boy who surrenders to them, “Lucian”, is ACTUALLY THE JACKAL! He thought he could trick Darrow, but it is in fact Darrow who tricks him, pinning him to the table with a dagger through the hand and explaining that his army was faking their drunkenness and is currently roaming the castle, digging out the Jackal’s followers.
While Darrow is having his little tete-a-tete with the supremely creepy Jackal, Pax returns with the news that they have in fact found his allies…but unfortunately for our heroes, the Proctors are STILL going to do their best to help the Jackal cheat, and this time, it comes at the cost of Pax. Because Darrow is distracted by the Jackal’s willingness to saw off his own hand using the ionBlade Pax offers him, and when the Proctors toss a sonic detonator into the room it gives the Jackal a moment to stab Pax in the neck with his own blade.
The Jackal then moves for Darrow, but Pax protects his friend by covering him with his body. Pour one out for our dear, loyal PAX AU TELEMANUS!
Of course the Jackal escapes, but the Proctors also capture Mustang, and when Apollo shows up to threaten Darrow with harming her, Darrow finally just LOSES it – and with the help of the gravBoots he stole from Fitchner and the knifeRing that was recently returned to him, he straight up MURDERS Proctor Apollo. Goodbye and good riddance!
And now there’s only one thing for it – it’s time for them to storm Olympus! This goes a lot easier than it maybe could or should have, and soon Mustang is free and Darrow sends her off to fetch the Jackal’s Standard and end this game once and for all…except when he retrieves Fitchner from the Apollo Castle’s dungeons (where he was stowed after Darrow knocked him unconscious), Fitchner reveals that Mustang is…wait for it…
THE JACKAL’S TWIN SISTER!
This means that now Darrow has to worry about her impending betrayal while he also finally goes to take back Mars Castle, which turns out to be another easy mark (but with no traps in store this time). And in even better news, he finds Roque alive! Buuuut then when Darrow confronts Cassius, his former friend-turned-attempted-murderer tells him that they are in a blood feud before stomping out like the big ol’ hypocritical baby he is.
And hey, turns out everything is gonna come up Darrow for the rest of the book – because DUH, of COURSE he didn’t actually have to worry about Mustang, who soon shows up to dump the captured Jackal at his feet.
The game doesn’t end in the raucous celebrations one would expect, but in quiet reunions of families…except for Darrow, whose story is that he doesn’t have a family anymore. Not to worry, though! The ArchGovernor of Mars – the very man who killed Eo and was doing his best to cheat his son’s way through the Institute – wants Darrow to be a lancer for his household!
And Darrow, knowing this is his most hated and yet most needed option, accepts…
