Dark Age by Pierce Brown

Blurb:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Thebestselling author of Morning Star returns to the Red Rising universe with the thrilling sequel to Iron Gold.

He broke the chains. Then he broke the world….
 
A decade ago Darrow led a revolution, and laid the foundations for a new world. Now he’s an outlaw.
 
Cast out of the very Republic he founded, with half his fleet destroyed, he wages a rogue war on Mercury. Outnumbered and outgunned, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will he become the very evil he fought to destroy?
 
In his darkening shadow, a new hero rises. 
 
Lysander au Lune, the displaced heir to the old empire, has returned to bridge the divide between the Golds of the Rim and Core. If united, their combined might may prove fatal to the fledgling Republic. 
 
On Luna, the embattled Sovereign of the Republic, Virginia au Augustus, fights to preserve her precious demokracy and her exiled husband. But one may cost her the other, and her son is not yet returned.
 
Abducted by enemy agents, Pax au Augustus must trust in a Gray thief, Ephraim, for his salvation. 
 
Far across the void, Lyria, a Red refugee accused of treason, makes a desperate bid for freedom with the help of two unlikely new allies.
 
Fear dims the hopes of the Rising, and as power is seized, lost, and reclaimed, the worlds spin on and on toward a new Dark Age.

Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga:
RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER

Review:

***Spoiler Alert***

“Per aspera, ad astra.”

Dark Age grabs you by the throat and grinds your face in the gritty devastation of demigods massacring without regard for the destruction left in their smoking wake. Like a traitorous EMP, Brown plunges the Rising and Howlers into a dreary dark age that will force them to crawl out of on their hands and knees.

“I will tell you what I fear. I fear time has diluted our dream! I fear that in our comfort, we believe liberty to be self-fulfilling! I fear that the meekness of our resolve, the bickering and backbiting on which we have so decadently glutted ourselves, will rob us of the unity of will that moved the world forward to a fairer place, where respect for justice and freedom has found a foothold for the first time in a millennium. I fear that in this disunity we will sink back into the hideous epoch from which we escaped, and that the new dark age will be crueler, more sinister, and more protracted by the malice which we have awoken in our enemies.” 

In the opening sequence, the Battle of Ladon juxtaposes the savagery of Atalantia and Lysander with Darrow. As the Free Legion has atomic weapons dropped on them, resulting in a nuclear wasteland of radiation sickness and carnage, Darrow responds by harnessing the earthshattering might of the long-abandoned Storm Gods. Thousands, millions are killed on either side. The Fear Knight impales survivors as a warning sign; Darrow pulverizes human bone with his metallic Drachenjäger forces. Both armies resort to savagery in the guise of furthering purposes for the betterment of humanity. Brown masterfully demonstrates the tunnel of darkness both sides have slid down in their descent into depravity. There are moments when I’m cheering for Darrow and there are moments when I’m questioning if Lysander’s ideals are really so misplaced. 

One of my favorite contrasting chapters when Brown is cycling between Lysander and Darrow during the Battle of the Ladon occurs when Lysander describes an epic, devastating battle when his team meets up with Darrow. He ends the encounter with his head against a rocket propulsion, the skin of his face boiling off his skull. In the next chapter, Darrow notes that on their way to their destination city, they met light resistance from a broken party of solders from the Iron Rain. However, for all who have read Dark Age, they know that while at the beginning of Dark Age, it seemed like Darrow had inked out a victory from Atalantia, by the end Darrow was forced to flee Mercury with his slingBlade in the bloody hands of Lysandar, his force shattered.

“This is no tale of salvation, it is one of sacrifice. This is our Thermopylae.”

All of the great storylines that began in Iron Gold progressed beautifully and painfully in Dark Age. Pax and Electra’s growth with Sefi and the Obsidians was well done. Pax’s moment of triumph when he took control of the ship during the battle, deftly piloting it to victory gave me chills.

“This is how a legend begins. The First Boy. The Son of the Rising, fulfilling his parents’ promise. He looks afraid to step into his new world, as if he feared this moment but knew it would come. I wait for him to look at me to give him a nod of encouragement. This time, he needs none. With Electra at his side, he steps past me and into the crowd, which parts and raises their clenched fists in salute as they chant his father’s name.”

Again, Brown demonstrates that he is passionate about destroying our hearts as readers and has no conscience when he decides the fate of beloved characters. I LOVE this about Pierce’s writing. There is legitimate tension constantly throughout the series because I know that anyone can die at any time. He is even willing to kill main POV characters. There are too many authors who aren’t willing to kill main characters, and it removes the gravitas of a series. The Triumph from Golden Son proved that Brown was willing to hurt his audience, but Dark Age has brutalized those expectations. There are just so many deliciously devious moments throughout this book: the Day of Red Doves, Orion, Alexander Au Arcos, Ulysses, any time Volsung Fá steps onto the stage. There are so many more. And there are so many questions that have been left hanging. Sevro with the Abomination. The Pandamonium Chair. Atalantia with Lysander. Lysander with Apollonius.

“Laughter spews from between my teeth. I would die for the truth that all men are created equal. But in the kingdom of death, amidst ramparts of bodies and wind all of screams, there is a king and his name is not Lune. It is Reaper.”

Pierce Brown has found a way to take a wildly successful space opera that, while large in scope, was tight and focused in recitation with the first trilogy, and blow it up into a much more mature, thoughtful discussion of how far a god of war can descend into darkness to liberate before he becomes the fiend he was originally fighting. Dark Age melded the complexity and maturity of Iron Gold with the fast-paced, brutal violence of Golden Son to create the masterpiece that is Dark Age. There is a reason that the Howlers have transcended through the pages of these books into a group of people in real life who identify so deeply with this series. This is a series for the ages. It kills me that I can never read this book again for the first time.

“To the trembling of the worlds.”

And as always:

“My pleasure, Good Reaper.”

“Hail Reaper.”