Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

This is just a demonstration of their power. It is their power. They decide the winner. A game of merit won by birth. It keeps the hierarchy in place. It keeps us striving, but never conspiring.

Yet despite the disappointment, some part of us doesn’t blame the Society. We blame Gamma, who receives the gifts. A man’s only got so much hate, I suppose. And when he sees his children’s ribs through their shirts while his neighbors line their bellies with meat stews and sugared tarts, it’s hard for him to hate anyone but them. You think they’d share. They don’t.

An empire cannot be destroyed from without till it is destroyed from within.

“Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence.”

Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.

Yet the question remains, is Mustang her father’s daughter? Or is she the girl who hums Eo’s song? I think I know the answer. She is what Golds can be, should be. Yet her father and brother are what Golds are. Eo never would have guessed it could be this complicated. There is goodness in Golds, because in many ways, they are the best humanity can offer. But they’re also the worst. What does that do to her dream? Only time will tell.