(Note: rating scale for 2020 is out of seven. 1 being ‘don’t touch with a 39 ½ foot pole’ and 7 being ‘I’ve likely screeched into the void so loud and excitedly that I summoned a demon’.)
1. Dark Age by Pierce Brown
Rating: a MILLION. Okay, 7. Because of my stupid self-imposed rating system.
Warnings: Graphic violence, racism, classism, death, murder, child death/loss, torture, war, I’m not lying when I say this is a DARK book and my trigger tags won’t do it justice. All these warnings are not just ‘oh this occurs once’ — these triggers should be magnified ten-fold.
Favorite Lines: A collection. I don’t even care if the number of things I’m quoting is obnoxious. This book is THAT good.
“Fear those who seek your company for their own vanity. As soon as you eclipse them in the mirror, it won’t be the mirror they break.”
“Pandora was a fiction written by men to blame the miseries of the world on women.”
“Every gradient of gold that exists spirals toward the pit of her pupils, paling in hue as they approach that darkness so it seems as if one stares at an eclipse.”
“Those glossy peacocks in the Senate read our reports. But the further you are away from it, the more war reads like arithmetic, and past that it reads like fiction, past that it’s just an annoying video on your info stream.”
“Only humanity could grasp the stars and then let them slip through its fingers for the pettiness in its heart.”
“You asked, what do I fear? I fear a man who believes in good. For he can excuse any evil.”
“I hate tea,” a synthesized voice growls from above. “It’s just coffee with piss instead of coffee.”
“But the measure of a man is not the fear he sows in his enemies. It is the hope he gives his friends.”
“Since the first ape pulled himself out of the mire to fashion an axe from stone, the meek have served the strong. We learned to content ourselves with crumbs. We allowed ourselves to be placated by religion. A promise of something after all this horror. We allowed ourselves to be enfeebled by poverty. We learned to be scolded whenever we raised our voice. Lasting change must be slow and steady and civil, we were told. That civility neutered us. But tell me, Virginia, was Gold civil when they conquered Earth? Did they assemble in peaceful protests? Or did they come with terror?”
“Could that be what the world needs? Not dirty truths, not romantic paragons, but stubborn bastards who refuse to move?”
“It is a small choice to simply say: Fuck you.”
“He knows the dangers of the path I have chosen to walk, and he doubts me because the old do not remember the necessities of youth. They see only the years on our horizon to which they think we are entitled. But we are entitled only to the moment, and owe nothing to the future except that we follow our convictions.”
“I shape my razor from its long form to the slingBlade. The dread monster rises in the belly of me. 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.”
Thoughts: This book is number 5 of 6 in Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series, and it’s honestly my favorite of the lot. We join Darrow (and several other POV characters) as they try to reclaim what is theirs in a world that’s quickly changing all because of Darrow’s actions in previous books. This book is complex, it deals with dark and horrible things, but it’s unbearably timely and painstakingly haunting in so many ways.
Dark Age is INCREDIBLE. Pierce is INCREDIBLE. To show command over such an all-encompassing plot, letting loose the details when needed rather than as exposition, creating the very best morally grey characters I've ever read, the undeniable heart of the main players, and breaking my soul with Ulysses (I mean, I fucking SOBBED and threw my book across the room and cursed Pierce Brown to the heavens). The magnitude of the prose. The beautiful writing. For a 5th book in a series, which also changes the style of the narrative and pulls back the curtain so we can see the bigger picture and larger world, I'm impressed with Brown's command over his world and all its shifting gears.
While this book absolutely broke me, it's also one of my favorites in the series. I found all the technical aspects of the writing flawless, and the characters I've come to love so much equally gave me hope and broke my heart along the way. Genius and beautiful and devastating.
From my notes and highlights, a personal insight as I read this book: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS PIERCE BROWN DOING TO ME?? 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
