August 13, 2021
Dark Age by Pierce Brown
The basics
Title: Dark Age
Author: Pierce Brown
Series: Red Rising Saga #5
- Red Rising (2014) - Golden Son (2015) - Morning Star (2016) - Iron Gold (2018) - Dark Age (2019) - Untitled
Add it: Goodreads
Goodreads 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?
Here’s our recap of what happened in Dark Age by Pierce Brown. Can’t remember what happened in Dark Age? Read on for a full plot summary to refresh your memory!
what happened in Dark Age?
- Darrow takes his crew to go and save Orion from Ajax. They pull things off pretty smoothly, and manage to escape.
- Now on Mercury, Darrow has to come up with a good plan to hold Atalantia off.
- Lys heads to see Atalantia. Ajax is unimpressed to see his cousin return. Lys is pulled into Atalantia’s plan to attack Mercury, and so everyone starts the attack.
- Seraphina dies.
- Orion is about to go on a killing spree, so Darrow has to stop her. He then goes to Heliopolis in order to meet with people there.
- Lys completes his mission and thinks everything is going well, until he is seemingly betrayed by Ajax, who was meant to rescue him and his crew. Oops.
- Darrow finds Lys, they fight.
- There’s another battle in Heliopolis, but ultimately Darrow’s team wins. Thraxa was able to help out, which is nice.
- Virginia sends supplies to Darrow. She’s unable to win people over immediately.
- Sefi, the queen of the Obsidians, tells Ephraim to teach her people what he knows.
- Virginia goes with Sevro to talk to Dancer, and they persuade Dancer to vote for Virginia and helping Darrow.
- Sevro goes to capture the Earth’s queen.
- Dancer is in the middle of a veyr motivating speech when he starts hacking up blood. Oh dear. Multiple people die the same way. Virginia and Daxo are both killed (we think).
- Atalantia shows Darrow what happened to Virginia. She hopes he’ll be heartbroken and surrender. She threatens to bomb Heliopolis if he doesn’t.
- The supplies arrive on Mercury just in time to bring hope, and so they decide not to surrender to Atalantia.
- Ephraim gets a history lesson on the Obsidians. Apparently they have a lot of history with the Golds.
- Ephraim has finished training Sefi’s warrors btw so now they’re ready.
- Lys kills Ajax’s men after his betrayal. He’s wandering about in the desert for most of this book tbh. At some point he’s captured by Gorgons.
- Sefi and Ephraim liberate the mines. As a reward, Ephraim is given a ship. Ephraim saves Sefi.
- There’s a massive celebration. It’s cute, until Freihild is killed and the party-goers are attacked by the Ascomanni.
- It turns out that Sefi is sick and possibly dying.
- It also turns out that Volga is Ragnar’s daughter. You know the Volga who is in prison with Lyria?
- Anyway, Lyria and Volga head to Ephraim but they’re attacked. Stuff happens, they crash land on Mars, and they attempt to escape.
- Turns out Virginia is alive! Her people are executed in front of her. She also spots the clone of her brother, the Jackal, which is both weird and surprising.
- Virginia tries to turn the Jackal and Lilath against one another. She tries to bond with the clone, which is also weird. She manages to escape and heads to Mars.
- Lysandar is being tortured for a bit. He escapes with Alexandar, though, and they head to Heliopolis. They now want to stop Atalantia because she’s planning on doing some lowkey chemical warfare.
- Victra, who has been heavily pregnant up until now, gives birth at the Red camp. She and Victra are captured, her baby is killed, but Lyria escapes. It’s a bit grim.
- Lyria is about to send out a distress signal, and Ephraim follows it. There’s a battle and the leader of the Red Hand dies.
- Ephraim heads back to Sefi, who is killed by Fa shortly afterwards. Fa wants to kill Ephraim too, so he eats his heart. Yes, his literal heart. :/
- Darrow finds out that Lys has been hiding in the city. Lysandar figures he’s been found out so he shoots Alexandar because…. of course.
- Atalantia bombs Heliopolis.
- Darrow and Lys fight. Lys ruins Darrow’s Blade.
- Cassius shows up because OF COURSE and saves a few people. He flies off into the sunset with them.
- Lyria hears what happens and assumes Darrow has been killed.
- Fa contacts Lyria, who wants Volga.
- Lys and Atalantia get married… :/
- This upsets me, other fans, and also Ajax.
- :/
- Kalindora tells Lys that Atalantia killed his mother. Apparently Kalindora hated Octavia (and Atalantia) all along. Cool. She warns Lysandar that Atalantia will be a terrible leader like… yeah???
- Virginia reunites with Pax on Mars.
- Earth gets taken by Lune.
- Lysandar goes to talk to the Minotaur because he hopes the Minotaur will help him kill absolutely everyone. They plan to head to Mars. Cool.
This is a full plot summary of what happened in Dark Age by Pierce Brown. Check out our recap list for more recaps. If you can’t find what you need, you can request a recap from us!
