Pierce Brown has released the first three chapters from Morning Star

If you loved Red Rising and Golden Son as much as I did, then you know Morning Star is already number 1 on your list of most anticipated books of 2016.  And luckily, it’s getting released near the beginning of the year, so at least I’ll have the rest of the year to let my brain recover from it.  From how it’s been for the first two books, I’m sure I’m going to need that time.

Anyway, Pierce Brown released an excerpt, basically the first three chapters, from Morning Star, the third and final book of the Red Rising trilogy.  Here’s the prologue:

I rise into darkness, away from the garden they watered with the blood of my friends. The Golden man who killed my wife lies dead beside me on the cold metal deck, life snuffed out by his own son’s hand.

Autumn wind whips my hair. The ship rumbles beneath. In the distance, friction flames shred the night with brilliant orange. The Telemanuses descending from orbit to rescue me. Better that they do not. Better to let the darkness have me and allow the vultures to squabble over my paralyzed body.

My enemy’s voices echo behind me. Towering demons with the faces of angels. The smallest of them bends. Stroking my head as he looks down at his dead father.

“This is always how the story would end,” he says to me. “Not with your screams. Not with your rage. But with your silence.”

Roque, my betrayer, sits in the corner. He was my friend. Heart too kind for his Color. Now he turns his head and I see his tears. But they are not for me. They are for him. For what he has lost. For the ones I have taken from him.

“No Ares to save you. No Mustang to love you. You are alone, Darrow.” The Jackal’s eyes are distant and quiet. “Like me.” He lifts up a black eyeless mask with a muzzle on it and straps it to my face. Darkening my sight. “This is how it ends.”

To break me, he has slain those I love.

But there is hope in those still living. In Sevro. In Ragnar and Dancer. I think of all my people bound in darkness. Of all the Colors on all the worlds, shackled and chained so that Gold might rule, and I feel the rage burn across the dark hollow he has carved in my soul. I am not alone. I am not his victim.

So let him do his worst. I am the Reaper.
I know how to suffer.
I know the darkness.
This is not how it ends.

Read the rest of the excerpt right here!

And don’t forget to pre-order Morning Star, which will be available February 9, 2016!

Omnis vir lupus

Source: Red Rising Trilogy