The audience for this is clearly intended to be "People who liked The Hunger Games." Except for straight white men.

Our hero, Darrow, lives in a stratified, classical Greece inspired society, which is almost hilariously evil. Like, his caste, the Reds, live underground, starved, labouring in a fatally dangerous job, lied to that they are working for the day when Mars is inhabitable. What they don't know is that Mars is already inhabitiable, it's just that their labour is still useful. Also, they labour all month to win a competition that will give them extra food, but when they win, the prize goes to the other team because their overlords, the Golds, are Just That Evil. Anyway, his wife is murdered by the Golds, and Darrow is recruited into the resistance, where he is given a plastic surgery makeover to look like a Gold, and he becomes Revenge Batman to infiltrate the Golds and bring about their downfall.

So, Undercover!Darrow has to go to school for Young Golds, so that he can get into their society, and it turns out that the school for Golds is also murderous. It starts with mandatory murder, and then it gets brutal. They are divided into camps (Darrow's is called 'Mars', because classical Greek) and told that whoever rises to the top of their camp, and whoever's camp wins the war, will gain top opportunities when jobs are handed out. This is where it gets very Hunger Games + rape. The war is supposed to be non-fatal, but eh. Sometimes accidents happen. Like sometimes you accidentally get stabbed in gut a couple dozen times.

It is interesting to see the forces that shape Gold society: obviously if your leaders are drawn from a pool of traumatised children, forced to kill or be killed at a young age, that's going to shape your society in some (terrible) ways. Some of the murder-y teens Darrow allies himself with in the battle are interesting characters; some of them rapists.

But honestly the book's greatest handicap is Darrow. He's not very interesting. His likes are: his dead wife, revenge, and ... I can't think of a third thing. He's freakishly talented at everything, except he's only sorta talented at the pschology of groups. His dislikes are: Golds. Who tweeted that Batman has the personality of "very grim oatmeal"? Because that is Darrow.

Anyhoodle. I managed to finish this book, half out of spite, but it is not technically incompetant.