From the Conquering to the Dark Age
A high-level chronology of the saga’s events. Entries from Golden Son onward include outcomes — turn on Spoilers in the header, or click a blurred line, to read them.
Humanity leaves Earth
A failing homeworld drives the species outward. Colonies take root on the Moon, Mars and beyond, at enormous human cost — the labour done largely by the ancestors of the Reds.
The Conquering
A cabal of the genetically enhanced — the first Golds — overthrows the democracies of Earth and Luna in a single coordinated stroke. The Iron Compact is written, and the fourteen Colors are codified into law.
The Society at its height
Octavia au Lune has ruled for over sixty years. The hierarchy is total, stable, and, to its rulers, self-evidently just. On Mars, the clan of Lykos mines helium-3 and sings old songs in the dark.
Eo’s defiance
Sixteen-year-old Darrow, the finest Helldiver in Lykos, loses his wife Eo when she is hanged for singing a forbidden hymn of the old Earth. He is hanged beside her grave for burying her — and then cut down, alive, by the Sons of Ares.
Red RisingThe Carving & the Institute
The Carver Mickey rebuilds Darrow’s body as a Gold’s. He passes the entrance trials and enters the Institute, where the Society’s young Golds are divided into Houses and set to war.
Darrow takes House Mars, wins the entire Institute, and is recruited into House Augustus — but kills Julian au Bellona, earning the blood feud of House Bellona.
Red RisingThe war of the Houses
Darrow, now a celebrated young commander, is caught between Augustus and Bellona and the schemes of the Sovereign. He builds a secret coalition to break the Society from within.
Fitchner is revealed as Ares and is executed by Octavia. Roque betrays Darrow at a victory feast; the Jackal captures him. The Rising is beheaded in a night.
Golden SonOpen rebellion
Rescued and rebuilt, Darrow stops fighting a secret war and starts a public one, uniting Reds, freed Obsidians and dissident Golds under the banner of the Rising.
The Rising takes Luna. Octavia is killed, the Jackal executed, and Virginia au Augustus declares a Solar Republic with Darrow at its side.
Morning StarThe Republic falters
The war against the Society’s remnant drags on. The Republic is broke, divided and compromising its founding ideals. Four lives — a general, an exiled heir, a Red refugee, a Gray thief — converge on Luna.
Iron GoldThe Dark Age
Every front collapses at once. Darrow is stranded behind enemy lines; Luna tears itself apart; the Rim and the Core both turn on the Republic.
Atalantia au Grimmus unites the Gold coalition, the Obsidian break with the Republic under Sefi, and the siege of Mercury becomes one of the bloodiest events of the saga.
Dark AgeThe long way home
Darrow crosses a Solar System that has turned him into a legend, trying to reassemble an army, an alliance, and himself.
Darrow and Cassius finally settle their long account, and the board is set for a final reckoning with Atalantia.
Light BringerThe finale
The concluding novel of the saga, still forthcoming — the end of the war that began with one song at the bottom of a mine.
Red God