Awesome / Red Rising

The Red Rising universe is full of awesome moments. Warning: All spoilers are unmarked.

The original trilogy

In General

• The series is popular enough to earn the Goodreads Choice award for science fiction three years in a row!!!
• Darrow and Mustang's plans, which typically involve a combination of Batman Gambit, Kansas City Shuffle, Unspoken Plan Guarantee, and heaping piles of Refuge in Audacity.
• Darrow is enough of a Magnetic Hero that even after finding out that he's a Red, Sevro, the Howlers, Victra, and Mustang (although she takes a while to come around after her and Darrow's Second-Act Breakup) remain loyal to him anyway, simply because he's their friend.
  • He's even charismatic enough that despite their rivalry, Cassius still respects him enough to eventually pull off a Heel–Face Turn.

Red Rising

• The fact that Darrow managed to survive his Carving at all is an achievement in itself.
• Darrow and Mustang managing to Take a Third Option to the Institute's training program by turning the enslaved students into an army of followers with Undying Loyalty simply by being leaders who don't abuse their subordinates
• When the Proctors' rigging the game in The Jackal's favor becomes increasingly blatant, Darrow and his army press on anyway. And when Proctor Apollo personally attempts to kill Darrow, he fights the man off and actually manages to kill the man. Let me reiterate: Darrow KILLS A PROCTOR!!!
• To top the killing of Apollo, Darrow takes his army and, using only a single working pair of gravBoots and whatever gear they have on hand, manage to reach Olympus, the Proctors' flying island, and conquer it. They did it in less than a day.
• The true introduction to Adrius au Augustus. After being cornered and having to slice off his hand to escape, he does so, and even dryly remarks about it. Say what you will of the man, but he's a vicious, psychotic badass.

Golden Son

• The duel between Cassius and Darrow, and the ensuing mass-Mêlée à Trois
  • Highlights:
    • Tactus cut Cagney au Bellona completely in half.
    • Victra knocking her sister out with one punch.
    • The Telemanuses fighting with razors as big as Darrow.
• The Sovereign's Oracle test - playing a game of twenty questions with lie-detecting monsters strapped to their arm. Octavia informs Darrow that seventy-one people have played against her. Only one person has ever managed to beat her.
  • And Darrow makes two.
  • Credit to Fitchner for being one of the few to refuse to play in the first place.
• The entire escape from Luna. Particularly once Sevro and the Howlers enter the fray.
• Aja gives Quinn a swift, brutal beat down with her bare hands.
• Darrow and Sevro seizing control of the Vanguard all by themselves.
  • Followed by Darrow convincing the lowColors to rise up against the loyalist Golds in exchange for their lives, leading to a massive Zerg Rush that puts the ship firmly under Darrow's control within a matter of minutes.
• Orion manages to convince Darrow to make her captain of the newly-renamed Pax despite her co-workers belittling her and trying to boost their own image purely because of the fact that she's the only Blue on the ship with enough of a spine to talk back to a Gold.
• Darrow and team rescue the Jackal, take back their ships, and defeat Pliny with barely any casualties on either side.
• The Iron Rain and the Battle of Mars.
  • Victra managing to convince her mother to change sides at the last minute, right in the middle of the Bellona fleet!!!
  • While it was an Offscreen Moment of Awesome, Ragnar killing the Wind Knight and giving Cassius a No Holds Barred Beat Down certainly makes everything more entertaining.
• The fact that Fitchner, the lazy, arrogant instructor of House Mars - turned Olympic Knight, turned out to be Ares, leader of La Résistance and the first person in centuries to openly defy Gold.
  • And the best part is that, until Harmony betrayed him after learning his identity, Golds couldn't fathom the idea that one of their own might be Ares. He was able to maintain his cover so thoroughly that nobody but Octavia even considered the possibility that the leader of the Sons of Ares might actually be a Gold.
• As sad as it is, it's still awesome just how thoroughly the Jackal's betrayal at Darrow's triumph was executed. He captured Darrow and Victra, killed everyone else in the room, including his terrible father, and ingratiated himself to the Sovereign all in one swift, brutal stroke.

Morning Star

• Darrow and the Nakamuras' escape from the Jackal's fortress in Attica. Highlights include:
  • A team of Helldivers from Lykos burrowing up from the ground in Claw Drills
  • Sevro and Ragnar leading an army of Sons of Ares to buy enough time for Darrow to escape.
• The Battle of Phobos.
  • Darrow's Rousing Speech plus Powder Keg Crowd equals Spark of the Rebellion.
  • Ragnar and Rollo leading the Sons of Ares to capture the moon's main security station
  • Darrow's entire plan: while Sevro, Victra, and Quicksilver coordinate the rebellion on Phobos, stealing the Martian Navy warships sent to retake the moon while they're at it, Darrow himself, along with Holiday, Ragnar, one of Quicksilver's Blues, and the last minute addition of Mustang, leave the station so they can hide among the fleeing Gold refugee ships and travel to the Valkyrie spires in order to liberate the Obsidian tribes on Mars.
• The fall of Asgard station. Mustang and Darrow talk Sefi Volarus into joining their cause, and together, they defeat the Golds, overthrow the queen, and bring hell to the Society in the form of the Obsidian clans.
• The Battle of Ilium. All of it.
• The fight inside Octavia's bunker.
  • Aja's last stand. It takes Darrow, Mustang, Cassius, and Sevro all working together to bring her down.
  • The sheer amount of Batman Gambit and Unspoken Plan Guarantee involved in even getting inside the bunker.
  • Sevro's return from faking the dead is awesome in and of itself. For several chapters, readers were in various states of shock, fear, and rage over Cassius apparently betraying the group despite his bonding moments with Darrow earlier in the book and Sevro's death. Then, as the Jackal pulls the trigger to execute Darrow, the gun turns out to be empty. Suddenly, Cassius kills Octavia's bodyguards, and while he and Mustang duel Aja, Darrow sticks a syringe full of adrenaline into Sevro's chest. The Atomic F-Bomb Sevro drops upon waking up immediately turns into the Most Wonderful Sound as the final battle begins.
  • The entire plan is a moment of it: Darrow has Cassius fake his own betrayal, willingly allows his own hand to be severed, fakes Sevro's death with armor designed to replicate human tissue, plays dumb to let Adrius lull himself into false security, they kill Octavia and Aja, and finally, they corner Adrius. Except there's one snag.
• The Jackal may be a right bastard, and it may be awful, but he reveals that he's had nuclear warheads stashed all along. It's horrifying but cruelly awesome when he starts nuking cities to try and bargain for his freedom, killing millions in the process.
• The execution of Adrius au Augustus. After all he's done, is it a badass, triumphant moment? No. Mustang weeps for him and pulls his leg, to remind him that she loved him all along. It's a quiet, poetic, forgiving sort of badass.
• Mustang's coronation as Sovereign.

The Iron Gold Trilogy

In General

• The fact that a Sequel Series was announced within months of Morning Star being released.
• After Iron Gold was delayed by five months, the fandom went ballistic when, the week of Christmas 2017, Pierce revealed the title of the second book, Dark Age, and that it would be coming out less than a year after Iron Gold, in September 2018.

Iron Gold

• Promotional materials repeatedly bring up how Mercury and Venus are still under the control of the Ash Lord. The book opens up with Darrow conquering Mercury, meaning that the Society Remnant's territory is now down to just Venus.
• Ephriam kidnapping Electra and Pax sends Victra and Mustang into Mama Bear mode.
  • Victra sets out on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, heedless of the fact that she's eight months pregnant. Since Lyria is the only suspect, Victra wants to question the girl herself, and comes after Holiday and Lyria in full pulseArmor.
  Victra: "You idiots lost my child. I will get her back. With words, or with iron. Your choice. Give me the Red, or I will come and cut her out of the belly of your ship. You have ten seconds to comply. Victra out."
  • Kavax's wife Niobe gets in on the action too, since her husband was injured during the abduction. Her presence, and that of Augustus and Telemanus forces, are the only thing that gets Victra's forces to fall back.
  • Mustang gives the supporting cast a blistering What the Hell, Hero? when she arrives to find Theodora and the Telemanuses prepared to use the Oracles to interrogate Lyria.
  Mustang: "Did I say you could torture her, Daxo?"
  Daxo: "There's no need for you to see it. This is why you have us."
  Mustang: "Because I'm such a frail flower that I need bold souls to do my torturing for me?" (to Daxo's mother) "Niobe, even you?"
  Niobe: "After what was done to Kavax - "
  Mustang: "Yes. And what would he say about this?" (to Theodora) "I told you to kill all those monsters. Year ago. Did you not hear me or is insolence now to be expected from my spymaster?"
  Theodora: "I preserved a litter. To protect your family I would do anything."
  Mustang: "If Darrow were here..."
  Theodora: "I would look him in the eye and tell him I will not stop till his child is found, without apology and without remorse."
  Mustang: "And will you tell him that his child is lost? Oh, you thought I didn't know you helped him get into Deepgrave to release a war criminal who tried to murder my family in our sleep?"
  Theodora: "Virginia..."
  Mustang: (to everyone) "No. I tire of being treated like a child by my own council because I have chosen to obey the law. You're no different than Victra. You mistake morality for naivete. Now get out. I don't want to look at you any longer. It's time I talk with the girl alone."
• When Holiday and Mustang corner Ephriam and force him to help rescue the children, Mustang warns him that if he escapes or attempts to defect to the Syndicate, Volga will be executed.
  Mustang: "And be it on Mars, Luna, Earth, the Rim, or Venus itself, one night you will wake in the middle of the dark and find a shadow standing over you. If you are lucky, it will be me. If you are unlucky, it will be Sevro or my husband, and you will die shitting yourself in a foreign bed."

Dark Age

• Lysander's first encounter with Darrow on the battlefield. Darrow swiftly and utterly annihilates Lysander's unit, and Lysander realizes for the first time what he's really up against. The battle is depicted as a terrifying scene of utter carnage from Lysander's view, but Darrow's entire narration of it is "We brush away light resistance at the downed Storm God."

Sons of Ares comic

• If the covers are any indication, every page of the comic is going to be filled to the brim with Scenery Porn levels of Awesome Art.
• Fitchner surviving The Exposure as a baby. Three days and three nights alone in the wilderness with no protection from the elements.
• In the flashbacks to Fitchner's childhood, it turns out that fighting their way out of the Passage runs in the family.
• The Issue 3 flashbacks to Triton, where Fitchner dives into the water around the collapsing Lovelock Engine at the moon's north pole to save drowning Reds, heedless of the risk, because he didn't see expendable slaves, but human beings fighting for survival.
• Fitchner's duel with Theron au Aktler in the fourth Issue.
• The epic mission to rescue Bryn in the final two issues.
• The first issue of Volume 2 focuses on the Sons of Ares infiltrating Arturius au Vardan's private residence during a dinner party in honor of his infant son. Until Ryanna fires her gun to stop Fitchner from crossing into Would Hurt a Child territory, they had made it all the way inside undetected.