Iron Gold

“THE REAPER

Silent, he lies encased in mankilling metal in the belly of a starship called the Morning Star. The fear swallows him now as it has done time and time before. The only sound is the whir of his armor’s air filtration unit and the radio chatter of distant men and women. Around him lie his friends, they too cocooned in metal. Waiting. Eyes Red and Gold and Gray and Obsidian. Wolfheads mark their pauldrons. Tattoos their necks and arms. Wild empire breakers from Mars and Luna and Earth. Beyond them fly ships with names like Spirit of Lykos, Hope of Tinos, and Echo of Ragnar. They are painted white and led by a woman with onyx-dark skin. The Lion Sovereign said the white was for spring. For a new beginning. But the ships are stained. Smeared with char and patched wounds and mismatched panels. They broke the Sword Armada and the martyr Fabii. They conquered the heart of the Gold empire. They battled back the Ash Lord to the Core and have kept the dragons of the Rim at bay.

How could they ever stay clean?”

The novel opens with a prologue narrated in the third person that depicts brief moments before the attack on Mercury. In this quote, Darrow is introduced and identified only through his wartime nickname, Reaper. The passage recounts some of the events of the Red Rising series, offering context and character development. However, the final question introduces new thematic and personal stakes that will be developed, namely Darrow’s struggle with The Ethical Challenges of Power and Governance.

“Men call him father, liberator, warlord, Slave King, Reaper. But he feels a boy as he falls toward the war-torn planet, his armor red, his army vast, his heart heavy.”

This passage emphasizes the impact of war and leadership on Darrow’s personal life. The self-doubt that he experiences in the novel as he struggles with a fragmented identity is foreshadowed through his various titles: “father, liberator, warlord” etc. His view of himself as a “boy” illustrates his personal conflict with the titles given to him, setting up his character arc.

“With our victory on the first planet from the sun, the Ash Lord has been pushed back to his last bastion, the fortress planet Venus, where his battered fleet guards precious docks and the remaining loyalists. I have come home to convince the Senate to requisition ships and men of the war-impoverished Republic for one final campaign. One last push on Venus to put this bloody damn war to rest. So I can set down the sword and go home to my family for good.”

This passage establishes crucial background information about the state of the war at the novel’s beginning. Iron Gold begins 10 years after the conclusion of the Red Rising trilogy and takes place in the same world, and the first sentence summarizes the status quo with which the novel begins. In the next sentences, Darrow, the narrator, introduces some of the novel’s major plot points and his character’s main objective.