Campbell Award Nomination: Pierce Brown

I've seen Pierce Brown's debut novel Red Rising described in terms of its thematic and situational resemblance to other novels - Ender's Game, Lord of the Flies, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games. And it certainly does share something with each of these, beyond the obvious violence and general grimdark of the story. It shares with Ender's Game the concept of brutalising children to teach them to be warriors and the question of whether all-out violence is a legitimate path to victory. With Lord of the Flies, the depiction of children who lose the values of civilised society - compassion, rationality, tolerance, justice - in the face of the struggle to survive, and the question of the innate nature of humanity. With Game of Thrones, it shares an examination of leadership, loyalty, allegiance, power, betrayal - the stuff of politics and social organisation and control. And with Hunger Games, it shares the idea of hope, of the defiant gesture that speaks truth to power in the face of death, and of resistance to a society built on cruelty and injustice.

Darrow, the young protagonist of Red Rising, is a Red - a member of the worker caste, a helium3 miner in the dangerous depths of the Martian mines, the lowest of the low. The society he lives in is a rigidly hierarchical oligarchy in which the genetically and surgically enhanced humans of the Gold caste dominate all other humans - the merchant Silvers, the pleasure-giving Pinks, the technological Blues, and all the other Colors, high and low - through fear, brutality, indoctrination, false hope and lies.

But in the depths of Mars, revolution is brewing. And the Sons of Ares have chosen Darrow for a dangerous mission. Altered by painful surgeries, trained to act and react like a young Gold, given a false background, the leader of the revolution directs Darrow to infiltrate Gold society, gain as much power and influence as possible, and use his position to destabilise the highColor overlords and weaken their ability to suppress the coming rebellion.

But first, Darrow will have to not just survive, but win in the deadly game of capture the castle that Golds use to cull the weaklings from among their own children and train them to be ruthless and cunning. And though he doesn't know it, politics among the Gold great houses has stacked the deck against him.

This is not a comforting novel. It is dark, and Brown does not shy away from presenting the depths to which a society that rewards brutality can fall. Darrow is a young man, driven more by grief and anger, by the need to avenge the death of innocents and the betrayal of the people he grew up among than by abstract concepts of justice. He comes close to becoming that which he is supposed to tear down, over and over as he moves without guidance through the viperpit of Gold society. There is no guarantee that he will come out of the trial with soul even partly intact - but there is hope.

It's fast-paced, action-filled, hard to put down - but it's also profoundly thoughtful, raising questions about the best and worst expressions of humanity, leadership, social organisation and justice.

And I picked up the second volume in Brown's trilogy and started reading just minutes after finishing the first. Golden Son carries on the story of Darrow, out of the limited arena of politics and war he learned to navigate in the first novel, and into the charged world of immense wealth and intense house rivalry that is known simply as the Society.

Brought into the household of the ArchGovernor of Mars - the Gold ruler who had his wife killed - Darrow finds himself in the middle of political intrigues, machinations and feuds between the Great Houses, plots and rivalries within the House he serves, and changes in the direction of the Sons of Ares that he cannot countenance. Striking out on his own, he uses his discovery of a plot to overthrow the ArchGovernor of Mars - one backed by the sovereign herself - and the deep personal relationships, of both loyalty and animosity, that he forged in the first novel, to foment unrest and ultimately civil war. Though he succeeds - at least for a while - in starting, and winning, a war to drive a wedge between Mars, under the rule of the ArchGovernor, and the Sovereign, everything comes crashing down when his true identity is discovered, and the book ends with Darrow captured, the ArchGovernor dead at the hands of his own son - a deadly enemy of Darrow's - the Sovereign fully in control once more and the leader of the Sons of Ares killed.

Golden Son continues to explore the themes of leadership and loyalty that began in Red Rising, as Darrow learns through his triumphs and failures with both friends and foes. The non-stop action continues as well, sweeping the reader up in Darrow's path to glory and defeat.

Morning Star, the final volume of the Red Rising trilogy, continues the roller-coaster ride as Darrow is rescued and reunited with his allies - and gathers more as he moves inexorably toward a final confrontation with the Sovereign of Society at her power base on Luna. The novel is packed with battles on the ground and in space, with negotiations and secrets and plans within plans, victories and betrayals and all the action you could ask for. In the end, there is change, but not all that was dreamed of, the sacrifices and the costs of the revolution are massive, and the task of completing the rising and rebuilding a better, more just society seem almost too much to take on.

But still, there is redemption for some, and peace for others, and some kind of hope for all, no matter how provisional and how incomplete the victory.

All in all, it's a strong closing to a compelling work in three acts, and an impressive debut from Pierce Brown.