In the distant future, humanity has been divided into different Colored castes -- and the Red workers who slave and die in the bowels of Mars are at the bottom of the totem pole. 
 But one of them is destined to rise to the pinnacle in "Red Rising," the first book of Pierce Brown's tightly-wound sci-fi trilogy. While Brown's prose can be a little stilted at times, he brings a lot of raw, visceral intensity to his story about a teenage hero rising to the height of his civilization, and discovering how horrible and bloody it can be. 
 As a Helldiver of Lykos, Darrow's life is a hard one -- the Reds struggling to terraform Mars live in grinding poverty, with only short lives and nasty injuries to look forward to. His beloved wife Eo dreams of rebelling against the social order, but Darrow is content to let things be... 
 ... until Eo is executed, and Darrow is left for dead. He's rescued by the Sons of Ares, a rebellious cadre who want to rebel against their Gold overlords. They reveal to Darrow that Mars has ALREADY been terraformed into a thriving civilization ruled over by Golds and Silvers, and the Reds are the slaves who support them. Enraged, he agrees to their plan -- they will transform him from a Red into a Gold, and he will gain power to break the Gold domination from within. 
 Over the months that follow, Darrow is transformed -- he's carved into physical perfection, enhanced, educated and even given golden hair and eyes. But it turns out that was the easy part. His first tests at the Institute are ones where the strong kill the weak, and the students' first assignment is a medieval clash of death, rape and theft. Darrow not only has to keep his true identity a secret -- now he has to stay alive. 
 "Red Rising" feels like the next step after "The Hunger Games" -- a dystopian sci-fi about an impoverished teen rising up against a cruel government, and having to take part in a brutal "game" for supremacy. But this story takes it one step further. The stakes are higher, the violence more bloody and brutal, and the protagonist more steeped in tragedy (he's forced to hold his wife still while she's hanged). 
 And though Darrow is technically a teen hero, he doesn't act like it. Most young-adult heroes act and think pretty much like teens in our society, but Brown does the exact opposite. The Reds live short, dangerous lives. By their culture's standards, Darrow is already a grown man -- and he thinks like it, acts like it, and has all the passion, intensity and drive of a man. Though he is unswayed from his mission of vengeance, he gradually sees that some of the Golds are not just faceless tyrants. 
 Brown also crafts a pretty interesting universe -- it seems to be a combination of the Roman Empire and a color-coded caste system. It's brutal yet luxurious, decadent yet terrifyingly cold. And ideas like carving -- which can give you wings, extra fingers or a tail -- are woven seamlessly into the story, so that it never feels like he's just showing off all the cool ideas he had. 
 The biggest problem is that Brown's writing can be stilted into too-short sentences ("You're mad." "Thank you." "I assume you misspoke; pray repeat yourself"). But he pours lots of intensity into his writing, with huge splashes of blood and vivid emotions, and his descriptive prose can be lovely in a lean, muscular way ("Mist blankets all, even the thick forests that lie like homespun quilts over the foothills"). 
 "Red Rising" has some noob roughness, but it's a rousing, vibrant debut novel that leaves you eagerly awaiting whatever is coming for Darrow. Bravo, Pierce Brown.