Light Bringer
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Darrow returns as Pierce Brown’s New York Times bestselling Red Rising series continues in the thrilling sequel to Dark Age.
The Reaper is a legend, more myth than man: the savior of worlds, the leader of the Rising, the breaker of chains.
But the Reaper is also Darrow, born of the red soil of Mars: a husband, a father, a friend.
Marooned far from home after a devastating defeat on the battlefields of Mercury, Darrow longs to return to his wife and sovereign, Virginia, to defend Mars from its bloodthirsty would-be conqueror Lysander.
Lysander longs to destroy the Rising and restore the supremacy of Gold, and will raze the worlds to realize his ambitions.
The worlds once needed the Reaper. But now they need Darrow, and Darrow needs the people he loves—Virginia, Cassius, Sevro—in order to defend the Republic.
So begins Darrow’s long voyage home, an interplanetary adventure where old friends will reunite, new alliances will be forged, and rivals will clash on the battlefield.
Because Eo’s dream is still alive—and after the dark age will come a new age: of light, of victory, of hope.
Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga:
RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER
- Pages
- 1085
- First published
- 2022
- Language
- English
- Edition
- Ebook
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Shelved by 6 Litcadians
Reviews
Finished October 6, 2026
Wow. This book was awesome. Probably my favorite — or second favorite — of the series. After Dark Age, this was pretty much exactly what I wanted from Red Rising again. Darrow actually acted like Darrow. We got badass fights, great character moments, humor, hope, and drama without the book constantly trying to emotionally destroy me with one stupid death after another. At the beginning, Darrow is obviously broken. Screwface is alive — somehow — but pretty much broken too, and Darrow himself feels old, weak and defeated. I actually felt strangely close to Darrow during this part, especially with his problems with training and motivation. His internal battle against constantly finding excuses to quit hit pretty hard. And then, slowly: Darrow starts becoming Darrow again. That was probably my favorite thing about the entire book. The humor was also SO much better here. The warhead scene, the drinking jokes, the banter between the Obs and Greys, Cassius, Lyria, Darrow… there were several moments where I genuinely laughed. After how relentlessly miserable parts of the previous books were, I really appreciated that. Mustang and Darrow also continue to work best when Mustang is the brain and Darrow is the muscle. HE SHOULD LISTEN TO HIS WIFE. 😂 Chapter 35 in particular was beautiful and genuinely inspiring. I also loved getting Lyria back. Ever since Iron Gold, I was convinced she was eventually going to get some kind of upgrade and become a Red equivalent of Darrow. I was completely ready for SUPERHUMAN LYRIA. And Cassius and Lyria together? I swear Cassius is in love with her. 😂 I can picture them together perfectly. And hey, Sevro already proved that Colors aren't exactly a problem. The Rim/Core/Republic politics were interesting too. At one point it almost felt like the political structures of the Rim/Core alliance and the Republic had swapped places completely. Then everything with Fá... Finding out that the great Volsung Fá was basically a fraud was hilarious, although the guy still killed Sefi, so he obviously wasn't harmless. And Darrow's fight with him was EPIC. By that point Darrow was completely back. New fighting style, new weapon, Diomedes as an ally — YES. My only complaint with that whole sequence is something the series does constantly: WHY DO THE BAD GUYS ALWAYS MANAGE TO ESCAPE DARROW AT THE END?!? Volga being manipulated was also extremely predictable. I knew it was coming, but strangely it didn't give me that satisfying HA! I KNEW IT! feeling that predictions sometimes do. And Lysander... DIE, LYSANDER, DIE. I've been saying since book four that Darrow should've killed him at the end of Morning Star. 😂 At one point I was still thinking, "Maybe he's actually good underneath all this. Maybe he'll even end up marrying Virginia someday." Yeah. That prediction aged well. By the end, when Lysander talks about the past being dead, all I could think was: Yeah. The past is dead because YOU killed it yourself. Overall, Light Bringer had almost everything I love about this series: Darrow being a badass, massive battles, ridiculous plans, great character interactions, genuinely funny moments, and emotional scenes that didn't feel like Pierce Brown was killing characters simply because happiness is apparently illegal. It was epic without becoming exhausting. And most importantly: The Reaper is back.