Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.

On Mars there is not much gravity. So you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.

Without me, she would not eat. Without her, I would not live.

We grew together, and now are grown. In her eyes, I see my heart. In her breath, I hear my soul. She is my land. She is my kin. My love.

“Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death.

Two small men with quick green eyes and bald heads studded with metal spikes and tattooed with shifting digital codes suggest for me a trip to someplace called Osgiliath.

“In the densest places of man, humanity most easily breaks down,” he says.

Only a day ago that I suffered so that humanity, desperate to leave a dying Earth, could spread to the red planet. Oh, how well my rulers lied.

He disagrees with the rules, but he follows them. It is possible. I can do the same until I have power enough to change them.

I am the spark that will set the worlds afire. I am the hammer that cracks the chains.

Words are a weapon stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart.