As Red Rising fans eagerly await the official arrival of Iron Gold, Pierce Brown is already hard at work on the fifth book in the series, which will apparently be called Dark Age. Check out Pierce Brown’s official post on the matter…

“It is bloodydamn pleasure to announce DARK AGE will be coming soon. Quite soon.”

Just how soon is quite soon? Iron Gold is scheduled to arrive in stores on January 16, 2018. I can’t imagine that Dark Age could be written and edited in time to hit shelves any sooner than a year from then, right? Unless it’s already mostly written or is expected to be finished relatively soon. A fall release would be amazing, but I’m not holding my breath.

As for the Book 5 title, Dark Age sounds pretty ominous.

(SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE RED RISING TRILOGY THROUGH MORNING STAR!)

When Morning Star wrapped up, Darrow, Mustang & Co. seemed to have succeeded in uprooting the core of the Society by killing Octavia and executing Adrius. We’re expecting Iron Gold to reveal the state of the solar system a decade after the chains were effectively (or presumably) broken. It’s likely safe to imagine that a broken society takes time to mend and become whatever it’s destined to be next. With that in mind, does Dark Age mean we should be anticipate a dark-ages scenario for Society, or perhaps we can interpret it as a more ominous description of a certain character’s state of mind.

I’m looking at you Lysander.

Of all the characters most likely to turn dark, the now grown Lysander au Lune seems like the likeliest culprit. He was last seen mourning the loss of his grandmother and in the care of Cassius, another character with reasons to hold a grudge. Whether or not Lysander finds himself walking the same path as his power-hungry and ruthless grandmother remains to be seen, but it certainly seems like a viable option for this story. Of course, he’s not the only character who could be headed into his own dark age. We already know there will be new characters entering the picture in Iron Gold, a book I haven’t even read, so all we can do is blindly speculate on this new title. We may have a clearer picture of what this “Dark Age” may imply once we reach the end of Iron Gold.

Hopefully we’ll get a more concrete timeframe for when Dark Age is slated to arrive in the near future. It could be an announcement that’s slated to drop around the release of Iron Gold. In the meantime, we’re practically a month away from getting Iron Gold. And I can’t bloodydamn wait.