60 pages • 2 hours read
Pierce BrownIron Gold
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Physical Context: The Solar System
Pierce Brown’s Red Rising and Iron Gold series are set across a futuristic, colonized version of the Solar system. Iron Gold explores various locations within the system, which is divided into three sections, each ruled by a different leader.
Venus and Mercury are the domain of the Ash Lord and the remnants of his Color-based, segregated Society. Venus is an inhospitable planet that was artificially rendered inhabitable and is now very similar to Earth. One of the novel’s significant plot points revolves around Darrow’s ruthless attack on Mercury, depicted in the first chapter, that eventually leads to his removal from power.
Earth and Mars are part of the Solar Republic, ruled by Virginia, the Sovereign, and Darrow, the ArchImperator. They are also referred to as the Core and are the most naturally hospitable planets. Earth and Mars’s moons, Luna and Phobos respectively, are also inhabited. Hyperion, the capital of Luna, is a densely urbanized city, home to the Republic’s Senate and main institutions. Mars was formerly home to mines worked by enslaved people living underground but was liberated by Darrow. It is now inhabited by former miners who live in camps on the planet’s surface, like Lyria and her family.
Finally, Jupiter and Saturn make up the Rim Dominion, ruled by Romulus au Raa. The Moon Lords of Jupiter’s moons, namely Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, also answer to him. The Rim is particularly cold and inhospitable, and its inhabitants have a reputation for being strong and adaptable. In addition, the Rim and the Republic have brokered a peace agreement, the Pax Illium, that forbids anyone from crossing the border between the two territories.
Series Context: Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Series
Iron Gold is the first installment in Pierce Brown’s second dystopian fantasy series, following the Red Rising trilogy, Red Rising (2014), Golden Son (2015), and Morning Star (2016). The Red Rising series and is set in the same universe as Iron Gold, which picks up 10 years after its conclusion. While Iron Gold alternates between four narrators, the Red Rising series focuses on Darrow’s rebellion and rise to power.
Brown’s narrative is set in a futuristic, dystopian universe where the planets and moons of the Solar system are ruled by the Society. At the beginning of the Red Rising series, Darrow of Lykos is an enslaved “Red,” the lowest social caste, forced to work in Mars’s mines. After his young wife Eo is publicly hanged, Darrow joins the Sons of Ares, a rebel group that wants to dismantle Color-based oppression. They train Darrow to infiltrate the Gold Academy, where his combat skills and strategic mind enable him to climb the ranks. There, he also meets many of the characters who later appear or are mentioned in Iron Gold, such as Cassius and Virginia.
Over the course of the Red Rising series, Darrow gains allies and political momentum and wins battles against the Society, led by Lysander’s grandmother, Sovereign Octavia au Lune. The rebel cause, nicknamed the Rising, eventually overthrows Octavia and institutes a democratic system, the Solar Republic, led by Darrow and his wife Virginia. Darrow also manipulates the Rim Dominion’s leaders into a peace treaty, the Pax Illium, to consolidate his power. After Darrow kills Octavia, the last remnants of the Society’s forces retreat to Mercury and Venus. As the new Sovereign of the Republic, Virginia endeavors to bring former Society leaders to justice and bring peace to the planets liberated by the Rising: Earth and Mars.
Iron Gold was inspired by Brown’s desire to explore the political and ethical aftermath of Darrow’s rebellion: “To be honest, I was curious. Not just about what happens to an empire once it has been broken, but what rises from the ashes. What happens to rebels once they take on the mantle of rule. Authority is a pressure cooker of responsibility that twists and hardens” (Snetiker, Marc. “Pierce Brown Debuts New Red Rising Trilogy, Cover, Plot.” Entertainment Weekly, 15 Dec. 2016). The novel was included on the New York Times 2018 Bestseller List, and the Red Rising series earned Brown the Goodreads 2014 Best New Novelist Award, as well as the Goodreads Best Science Fiction Novel Award in 2015 and 2016.
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