Darrow is a Helldiver, a Red, the lowest rung of a rigid color-coded caste system. He and his people mine the depths of Mars, sacrificing everything in the belief that they are terraforming the planet so that humanity can one day live on its surface. Then Darrow learns the truth: Mars was made habitable generations ago, and the Reds are not pioneers but a permanent slave class, kept in the dark by the Golds who rule the Society.
Grief-stricken and radicalized, Darrow is taken in by a shadowy rebel network and surgically, brutally transformed into a Gold. His mission is to win a place at the Institute, the savage academy where the sons and daughters of the ruling class wage war on one another for dominance, and to climb high enough to strike at the heart of the Society itself. But to beat the Golds at their own game, Darrow risks becoming exactly what he set out to destroy.
Pierce Brown's debut launches the Red Rising Saga: a propulsive, brutal blend of dystopian science fiction and space opera, built on class war, betrayal, and the terrible cost of revolution.