Dark Age by Brown
Ref: Pierce Brown (2019). Dark Age. Hodder Paperback.
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Summary
For a decade Darrow led a revolution against the corrupt color-coded Society. Now, outlawed by the very Republic he founded, he wages a rogue war on Mercury in hopes that he can still salvage the dream of Eo. But as he leaves death and destruction in his wake, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will another legend rise to take his place? Lysander au Lune, the heir in exile, has returned to the Core. Determined to bring peace back to mankind at the edge of his sword, he must overcome or unite the treacherous Gold families of the Core and face down Darrow over the skies of war-torn Mercury. But theirs are not the only fates hanging in the balance. On Luna, Mustang, Sovereign of the Republic, campaigns to unite the Republic behind her husband. Beset by political and criminal enemies, can she outwit her opponents in time to save him? Once a Red refugee, young Lyria now stands accused of treason, and her only hope is a desperate escape with unlikely new allies. Abducted by a new threat to the Republic, Pax and Electra, the children of Darrow and Sevro, must trust in Ephraim, a thief, for their salvation—and Ephraim must look to them for his chance at redemption. As alliances shift, break, and re-form—and power is seized, lost, and reclaimed—every player is at risk in a game of conquest that could turn the Rising into a new Dark Age (goodreads).
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Color System
The Color system of the Society originally was a caste system created by early humans on Earth to create order when first colonizing the Moon. It is also a form of social hierarchy improved upon by the early Golds during their conquering of the Solar System. It divides Humanity into fourteen distinct "Colors."
Originally the "Colors" were native Earth human beings who simply wore colored clothes that denoted their position. After conquering Earth the founding Golds of "The Society" used genetic engineering to cause members of each Color to have hair and eyes to match their caste.
Beyond the coloring, the genetic structure of their bodies was modified to allow them to be more adept at performing their denoted tasks. Examples are Red's (miners) being smaller and squat, Obsidian's (fighters) being large and with 8, 5 or 4 fingers per hand, and Gold's (conquerors and explorers) having bone 5 times stronger than an average man. Every person's vocation is dictated entirely by their Color.
As part of the genetic engineering of the hierarchy, low Colors have significantly shorter pregnancies than pre-Color humans. Labor is induced for low Colors after a maximum of 5m of gestation through the use of catalysts, sedatives, or nucleic’s. Only Golds and Obsidians experience full 9m pregnancies with natural births.
In addition to the genetic engineering that gives individuals the pigment to match their castes, a certain amount of social engineering exists in an attempt to prevent the desire for social mobility. Obsidians (for example) believe Golds to be literal gods, helping to ensure their loyalty to their masters. While Reds are socially engineered to be heterosexual, family oriented, and marry and breed by age 14-16 in order to maintain and increase their labor population.
“The Gray soldiers prowl the cities ensuring order, ensuring obedience to the hierarchy. The Whites arbitrate their justice and push their philosophy. Pinks pleasure and serve in high Color homes. Silvers count and manipulate currency and logistics. Yellows study the medicines and sciences. Greens develop technology. Blues navigate the stars. Coppers run the beauracracy. Every Color has a purpose. Every Color prop’s up the Golds.”
High Colors
Golds: Rulers of society.
Peerless Scarred: The apex Golds who have completed The Institute above the Graduates and the Shamed. They are held in the highest esteem among Golds.
Silvers: Financiers and businessmen.
Whites: Clergy and judges.
Justices: The monastic whites who, after spending their life training in a monastery, have become the spirit of justice. They oversee many of the Gold ritual functions.
Coppers: Administration, lawyers, and bureaucrats.
Mid Colors
Blues: Bridge crew of starships and pilots.
Yellows: Doctors and researchers.
Greens: Programmers and technicians.
Violets: Artisans and other creatives.
Carvers: Violets who are capable of altering and creating life via surgery and genetic engineering. Trained in the Grove, they are given hallucinogenic medication, and then told to carve the things they saw. Notable Carvers include Mickey, the man who carved Darrow into a Gold.
Oranges: Mechanics and Engineers
Master Makers: Highly intelligent Oranges who specialize in multiple different fields of engineering. Notable Master Makers include Glirastes, the man who helped Darrow use the Storm Gods.
Grays: Regular soldiers and police.
Lurchers: These are the elite special forces comprised of highly trained Grays.
Low Colors
Brown: Servants, cooks, janitors.
Obsidians: Elite soldiers and bodyguards.
Stained: Obsidians who have passed a "Trial of the Stained" and are used as elite body guards and special forces by Golds. Physical specimens, they are bred and trained in the art of killing. Notable Stained include Ragnar Volarus and Volsung Fá.
Pinks: Pleasure slaves and social functionaries.
Roses of the Garden: The rarest and most valuable Pinks, extensively trained in the art of the human body and mind during their tenure in the Garden. Highly expensive and valuable. Notable Roses include Matteo, Theodora, and the Duke of Hands.
Reds: Manual laborers and miners.
High Reds: Reds who do not work underground in the mines like the low Reds, but hold the low-level positions above ground. They fill positions such as street cleaners, farmers, and janitors
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Significant Events
Darrow Fights Atalantia’s forces on Mercury.
Lysander and the Rim Lords Join with Atalantia to fight Darrow and the Republic.
Atalantia’s forces use atomics and fall in an Iron Rain on Mercury.
Darrow uses a Storm Engine that Holiday enhances, killing millions. Darrow kills Holiday to stop the storm.
Darrow and the Republic take and hold Heliopolis.
Ephrem crashes his ship with Pax and Elektra aboard to stop them from being captured by the syndicate. They are captured by the Obsidians and held by Sefi.
Mustang pushes the Senate to vote to save the Darrow and the Lost Legion on Mercury, however the Senate revolts.
Lyria saves Volga and Victra after they are all captured on Mars. Victra’s child is killed. She kills them all.
Mustang is captured and tortured by Lilith. She narrowly escapes with her life.
Sefi and the Volk leave the republic and capture the mines of mars.
The master maker Glirastes betrays the Republic, detonating his EMP and destroying the defenses of the republic forces on Mercury. Darrow’s Moring Star falls from the sky.
Lysander leads his troops on horseback against Darrow in Heliopolis. Darrow is narrowly saved by Cassius.
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Misc Quotes
“Life is meant to be felt. Else why live? Valleys make the mountains.”
“Well, here I am, you deviant bitch. Here I bloody am. The motherfucking consequence.”
“You asked, what do I fear? I fear a man who believes in good. For he can excuse any evil.”
“The tragedy of the gifted is the belief they are entitled to greatness, Lysander. As a human, you are entitled only to death.”
“I no longer trust stillness. Stillness is the enemy taking careful aim.”
“A moving mind is always fed. At rest, mine eats itself.”
“There will dawn a day when these hostile hours, these days of hatred and violence, seem the faintest of memories, but dark and steep and long is the road up out of hell. So do not tire, do not despair, do not abandon your brethren, and do not forget that through this darkness we and we alone carry the light of freedom. We must defend it with every cell in our bodies. If not now, when? If not us, who?”
“Is a man a coward if he realizes that bravery is just a myth the old tell the young so they line up for the meatgrinder?”
“But the measure of a man is not the fear he sows in his enemies. It is the hope he gives his friends.”
“One must worry about the strength of a principle when it must compromise itself so often to survive.”
“During war, the laws are silent.”
“I kept looking for hope in the world. Expecting the world to supply deliverance if I plucked the right chords. Demanding that it supply validation to my labor if I just gave enough effort. But that is not the nature of the world. Its nature is to consume. In time, it will consume us all, and the spheres will spin until they too are consumed when our sun dies. Maybe that is the point of it. Knowing that though one day darkness will cover all, at least your eyes were open to see moments of light.”
“But that is the noble lie of demokracy, isn’t it? The belief in humanity, even though humanity is a screaming, selfish mob. I love humans, truly. But humanity …” She shivers.”
“There’s never a right call, just people who make the hard ones.”
“Fear is the torrent. The raging river. To fight it is to break and drown. But to stand astride it is to see it, feel it, and use its course for your own whims.”
“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
“It is to remember how few people you know. How many do not know you. How many will soon forget you. How many praise you today to offer contempt tomorrow. Permanence of fame, power, dominion of the individual, are illusions. All that will be measured, all that will last, is your mastery of yourself.”
“Self-pity is the plebeian’s luxury. All that occurs is either endurable or unendurable. If it is endurable, endure it. If it is unendurable, follow your mother.”
“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.”
“Sarcastic ripostes are seldom clever enough to prove that they are little more than the desperate cries for validation of a petty and insecure mind.”
“Sometimes it’s better to let a wheel squeak than break the cart trying to fix it.”
“Don't you find it peculiar? The human conviction that we are the heirs of history instead of paragraphs that are almost over.”
“She listens because she’s heard enough noise to know that truth, if it ever appears, creeps in on quiet little feet.”
“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?”
“How sad I didn’t cherish a moment there with my son. All moments are like that sandcastle, it seems. There is no permanent happy future. There is no Vale. It all washes away.”
“So tell me, why kill passions with zoladone?” I glance at Aja’s razor. “Makes life’s flow a bit smoother.” “Poor little man,” she mocks. “Life is meant to be felt. Else why live? Valleys make the mountains.”
“From a distance, death seems the end of a story. But when you are near, when you can smell the burning skin, see the entrails, you see death for what it is. A traumatic cauterization of a life thread. No purpose. No conclusion. Just snip.”
“With his death imminent, the worlds feel emptier. Almost as cavernous as they did when Cassius fell. One by one, the titans of my youth disappear, and freed from their shadow, I do not feel liberated. I feel bereft.”
“I once thought the greatest sin of war was violence. It isn’t. The greatest sin is it requires good men to become practical.”
“He knows the dagers of the path I have chosen to walk, and he doubts me because the old do not remember the necessities of youth. They only see 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.”
“Pandora was a fiction written by men to blame the miseries of the world on women. I am not a fiction.”
“I am not here. I am no physical being. Electricity tethered to carbon. I am a pattern. And so is the world.”
“I am not here. I am no physical being. Electricity tethered to carbon. I am a pattern. And so is the world.”
“But that is the noble lie of demokracy, isn’t it? The belief in humanity, even though humanity is a screaming, selfish mob.”
“TO SEE THEM FROM ABOVE: the roving herds of beasts, the rivers carving stone, the rituals of man in all their varied panoply, to see the clouds roil over the patchwork latifundia of Asian plains, to see the mines of our home, is to remember the patterns of the world, and the majesty and complication and impermeable obscurity of distant lands. It is to remember how few people you know. How many do not know you. How many will soon forget you. How many praise you today to offer contempt tomorrow. Permanence of fame, power, dominion of the individual, are illusions. All that will be measured, all that will last, is your mastery of yourself.”
“I've spend enough time in the past, love. The dead need no tears. They don't rest easier for our vengeance, or our guilt. They'd want us to live. And life's about the now and the future, eh?”
“To be ingested by the military machine is to see the last hidden gear of the world. All is loud yet lonely, chaos yet order, functional yet dirty, fast yet slow. All is big. Except you.”
“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”-Julius Caesar.
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