8 books like Red Rising, from The Hunger Games to The Fifth Season, sorted by what you loved: brutal trials, space-opera scope, or revolution against a ruling class.
Updated June 10, 2026
Pierce Brown's Red Rising works because it refuses to pick a lane. It's a class-war dystopia where the lowborn Reds mine Mars believing they're saving humanity, then it becomes a brutal boarding-school survival saga as Darrow is surgically remade into a Gold and dropped into the Institute, where teenagers wage real war for rank. Then it expands again into solar-system space opera. The pull is that combination: gladiatorial intimacy, Roman-myth pageantry, and a hero whose grief and rage make every betrayal land hard.
Because the book does so many things, readers miss different parts of it. So this list is sorted into three paths. If you want more brutal competition, kids fighting to survive a rigged system, start with The Hunger Games and An Ember in the Ashes. If you want more space-opera scope and interplanetary war, look to Illuminae and Skyward (with Nexus for the harder sci-fi crowd). If you want more revolution, an underclass rising against a ruling caste, turn to The Fifth Season, Children of Blood and Bone, and Fireborne. Each pick below names which part of Red Rising it carries forward and where it diverges.
One practical note: Red Rising is book one of a seven-book saga, so if you simply want more Darrow, keep going with Golden Son before you leave. The books here are for when you've finished the saga, or need something to read between installments.
Read this if you want the interplanetary war and propaganda, told at breakneck speed.
Illuminae shares Red Rising's appetite for total war in space and its distrust of the powers running the show. After a megacorporation razes their tiny mining colony, two teenagers flee aboard evacuation ships pursued across the void, while a deranged AI and a spreading plague turn the fleet into a death trap. Like Brown, Kaufman and Kristoff care about the cost of survival, the lies institutions tell, and young people forced to make commander-grade decisions far too early. The space-opera stakes, a fleet running for its life, scale up just as Red Rising does after the Institute.
The big difference is form. Illuminae is told entirely through hacked documents: chat logs, military files, ship schematics, redacted reports. That makes it fast and cinematic but thin on the slow character interiority that makes Darrow ache. There's no class-revolution backbone either; it's a chase and a mystery. Reach for it when you want momentum and scale over politics, and don't mind the experimental, almost graphic-design layout.
Read this for the kill-or-be-killed arena and a revolution born from it.
This is the most obvious cousin to Red Rising, and for good reason. A rigid, color-and-district class system keeps a lavish Capitol fat while the lower tiers starve; a child from the bottom is thrust into an engineered fight to the death and turns survival into rebellion. Katniss and Darrow share the same engine: personal grief weaponized into defiance, a society that televises cruelty, and a slow realization that winning the game means changing it. If the Institute's deadly competition was the part that hooked you, Collins built the blueprint.
Differences are mostly scale and age. The Hunger Games is leaner, faster, and squarely YA, with a single arena rather than Brown's solar-system canvas, and far less graphic violence. The romance is more central, the worldbuilding less dense. Read it (or reread it) when you want the emotional clarity and propulsion of Red Rising without the 600-page sprawl, and as the warm-up to a trilogy that, like Brown's, gets darker as it widens.
Read this if the oppressed-underclass revolution mattered more to you than the spaceships.
N.K. Jemisin's Hugo-winning novel is the most ambitious book on this list and the closest to Red Rising's beating heart: a caste system that enslaves people for what they were born as. Orogenes can quell earthquakes, so the world both depends on them and brutalizes them, controlling them from childhood through institutional violence. That's Darrow's wound exactly, a useful underclass kept down by the people they sustain, and the slow-burn fury that builds toward upheaval is just as satisfying. The worldbuilding is staggering and the structure is cunning.
Know going in that this is fantasy, not space opera, and considerably more literary. Jemisin braids three timelines and uses second-person narration, which rewards attention but demands it. There are no gladiatorial school games and no comradely banter; the tone is harder, sadder, more adult. Choose it when you finished Red Rising thinking less about the duels and more about the injustice underneath, and you want a master class in how to write that rage.
Read this for a scrappy underdog clawing into an elite pilot academy.
Brandon Sanderson's Skyward catches a specific Red Rising pleasure: a protagonist from a despised, disposable class fighting to prove herself inside a prestigious, gatekept program. Spensa is the daughter of a branded coward, scrabbling for a slot in flight school while her people shelter underground from relentless alien attack. The competition for rank, the camaraderie and rivalry among cadets, and the hero hiding a dangerous secret all rhyme with Darrow's time at the Institute, plus there's a sharp, funny voice driving it.
It's lighter and more hopeful than Brown, firmly YA, and built around dogfights and a charming AI companion rather than political intrigue or class revolution. The violence is action-movie clean, the romance minimal, the central friendship genuinely warm. Hand it to a reader who loved the academy and the flying-by-the-seat heroics of Red Rising but wants something faster, sunnier, and easier to binge across its quartet.
Read this if you want the harder, near-future sci-fi behind the power struggle.
Nexus shares Red Rising's core question: when technology can transform a human being, who controls that power, and what does it do to the world? Ramez Naam imagines a drug that links minds directly, and the factions, governments, corporations, idealists, and zealots, that scramble to weaponize or ban it. Like Brown, Naam is fascinated by enhanced humans as both tools and threats, and the thriller plotting keeps a coiled, anyone-could-betray-you tension that fans of the Gold court intrigue will recognize.
This is the most grounded, technically-minded book here: present-day-adjacent, light on swordplay and Roman pageantry, heavy on neuroscience, espionage, and ethics. There's no underclass revolution and no academy, so it scratches the power-and-transformation itch rather than the gladiatorial one. Pick it when you want Red Rising's ideas about augmented humanity and institutional control delivered as a propulsive techno-thriller for adult readers.
Read this for a Rome-inspired military academy where students kill to rise.
If the Institute was the part of Red Rising you couldn't put down, this is your book. Sabaa Tahir builds a martial empire modeled on Rome, where the elite train at Blackcliff, a brutal academy that forges soldiers through fear, betrayal, and lethal trials. The dual narration pairs Laia, a scholar from the oppressed class who goes undercover, with Elias, a soldier sickened by the system he was bred to serve, and that infiltration plot, an underdog passing inside the ruling caste, is pure Darrow.
It leans more fantasy than science fiction, with supernatural elements and a stronger romantic pull, and it's YA, so the prose is brisker and the cast younger. The class-war stakes are present but more personal than solar-system-wide. Read it when you want the boarding-school brutality and the spy-among-the-elite tension of Red Rising in a fast, atmospheric, swords-not-starships package.
Read this if you want the morning after a revolution, with dragons.
Fireborne picks up where many revolution stories end and asks Red Rising's thorniest question: once you've overthrown the ruling class, what do you become? Rosaria Munda's world has already toppled a cruel aristocracy, and now orphans of the old regime and children of the revolution compete side by side to become dragonriders and leaders. The tests of rank, the friends turned ideological rivals, and the moral murk of a new order repeating old sins all echo the political weight Brown brings to Darrow's rise.
Tonally it's quieter and more introspective than Red Rising, YA in scope, and fantasy rather than sci-fi, trading mining colonies and spaceships for dragons and a single fractured city. The action is sparser and the focus more on loyalty and governance than on combat spectacle. Choose it when the part of Red Rising that gripped you was the politics of revolution and the cost of taking power, not just the fighting to get there.
Read this for an underclass rising to reclaim what a ruling caste stole.
Tomi Adeyemi's debut runs on the same fuel as Red Rising: a brutal class system, a people stripped of their birthright, and a young protagonist whose grief becomes a movement. In a West-African-inspired world, magic was violently purged and the maji bloodlines are now oppressed and hunted; Zélie's quest to restore that power is a revolution against a regime that rules through fear. The righteous anger, the personal loss driving political stakes, and the high-velocity action will feel familiar to anyone who followed Darrow.
It's epic fantasy, not space opera, and squarely YA, with multiple alternating narrators including a member of the ruling family wrestling with his inheritance. The pacing is relentless and the romance more prominent than Brown's. Reach for it when the oppression-and-uprising spine of Red Rising is what you want more of, delivered through a vivid mythology and a propulsive, emotionally charged trilogy opener.
Red Rising (2014) is book one of a seven-book saga. The original trilogy runs Red Rising, Golden Son (2015), and Morning Star (2016), following Darrow directly. The sequel arc continues with Iron Gold (2018), Dark Age (2019), Light Bringer (2023), and a final volume Pierce Brown has confirmed is still to come. Read them in publication order; the second arc spoils the first.
Which book on this list is closest to Red Rising's brutal academy trials?
An Ember in the Ashes is the nearest match for the Institute section: a deadly Roman-inspired military school where students kill to advance. The Hunger Games shares the kill-or-be-killed competition in a more compressed, single-arena form. If the Institute was your favorite part of Red Rising, start with one of those two.
Are these books young adult or adult science fiction?
Red Rising itself sits on the YA/adult line: marketed to adults but very crossover-friendly. This list spans both. The Hunger Games, Skyward, An Ember in the Ashes, Fireborne, and Children of Blood and Bone are YA. The Fifth Season, Nexus, and Illuminae read older or more experimental. Pick by how much grit and complexity you want.
Is there anything that captures the full space-opera revolution scope of Red Rising?
Honestly, few books match Brown's blend of gladiatorial intimacy and solar-system-spanning war. The Fifth Season comes closest on epic scope and oppressed-underclass revolution, though it's fantasy, not space opera. For the interplanetary scale specifically, Illuminae delivers the war-in-space sweep, just in a faster, more fragmented package.
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