12 Books Like Red Rising: Brutal Class Warfare Sci-Fi
Pierce Brown didn’t just write a book with Red Rising. He carved something into readers that doesn’t come out. That first twist. The Institute. Darrow’s transformation from slave to revolutionary to something the hierarchy never imagined.
If you’ve torn through the entire series and you’re desperate for more stories of brutal class systems, impossible odds, and characters who change everything by refusing to accept their place, these books should be on your list.
What Makes a Book “Like Red Rising”?
Before the recommendations, let’s identify what makes Red Rising work:
- Rigid class hierarchy that feels unjust
- A protagonist who rises from the bottom
- Brutal consequences for failure
- Political intrigue alongside action
- Transformation of the main character
- Found family among unlikely allies
- Revolution that actually costs something
Not every book here has all of these elements, but each captures something essential about Brown’s addictive formula.
1. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
Color-coded caste system? Check. Brutal military academy? Check. Revolution from the bottom? Double check.
Tahir’s fantasy world draws from ancient Rome, with the militaristic Martials ruling over enslaved Scholars. Laia is a Scholar whose brother is arrested; Elias is a Martial soldier who questions everything he’s been taught. Their stories collide at Blackcliff Military Academy, where the training makes the Institute look gentle.
Four books complete this series, and Tahir doesn’t pull punches with character deaths.
2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The obvious comparison, but it’s obvious for a reason. Collins paved the road that Brown drove down.
Katniss Everdeen didn’t want to be a symbol. She wanted her sister to survive. But the Capitol’s cruelty and the Districts’ desperation make her choice for her. The political machinery behind rebellion, the cost of becoming a symbol, and the trauma that doesn’t end when the fighting does—Collins explored all of this before Red Rising existed.
If you somehow haven’t read these, fix that.
3. Scythe by Neal Shusterman
In a world that’s conquered death, Scythes are the only ones allowed to kill—and they’re supposed to do it humanely, almost reverently. Citra and Rowan are chosen as apprentices to a Scythe who believes the system is being corrupted from within.
Shusterman asks: what happens to morality when consequence disappears? The answer is disturbing. The politics are as cutthroat as any you’ll find in Red Rising, and the world-building is meticulous.
4. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
The original military academy sci-fi. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is six years old when he’s recruited to Battle School, where children are trained to fight an alien enemy. Ender is too good at what he does, and the adults around him are willing to break him if it means saving humanity.
Published in 1985, the influence on everything that came after—including Red Rising—is impossible to overstate. The ethical questions it raises haven’t gotten easier to answer.
5. Nevernight by Jay Kristoff
Mia Corvere watched her father hang as a traitor. Now she’s training at a school for assassins, planning revenge against the people who destroyed her family. The Church of Our Lady of Blessed Murder is as brutal as the Institute, and Kristoff’s prose style—irreverent footnotes included—is unlike anything else in the genre.
Blood and snark in equal measure. The trilogy is complete and sticks the landing.
6. Dune by Frank Herbert
The original space opera about a prophesied leader rising among an oppressed people. Paul Atreides goes from noble heir to revolutionary figure among the Fremen of Arrakis, and Herbert asks uncomfortable questions about charismatic leaders and the followers who create them.
Red Rising owes massive debts to Dune, and the similarities become more apparent as Brown’s series progresses. If you haven’t read Herbert’s masterpiece, now’s the time—especially with the films introducing new readers.
7. Vicious by V.E. Schwab
Victor and Eli were brilliant friends who discovered how to create superpowers—and nearly killed each other in the process. Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison to find Eli. What follows is a story about revenge, morality, and whether anyone who gains extraordinary power can remain a good person.
Schwab’s protagonists are both villains by any reasonable definition, and that’s the point. No chosen ones here. Just two damaged men and the people caught between them.
8. The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
Rin tests into the most prestigious military academy in the Nikara Empire, a war orphan who shouldn’t have been able to compete. She discovers she has shamanic powers that could win wars—or destroy her. Then war actually comes.
Kuang doesn’t glamorize violence. The Poppy War contains some of the most harrowing battle sequences in recent fantasy, drawing explicitly from Chinese history and the Second Sino-Japanese War. This is revolution with actual cost, written by someone who understands that victory doesn’t heal anything.
9. Legend by Marie Lu
In a future Los Angeles divided between the wealthy Republic and the struggling Colonies, Day is the country’s most wanted criminal. June is a military prodigy hunting him. When tragedy brings them together, they discover the Republic they’ve been taught to love is built on lies.
Lu’s fast-paced trilogy is a gateway drug to darker political sci-fi. The class divide is stark, the romance is earned, and the action doesn’t stop.
10. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
Magic once flourished in Orïsha until a ruthless king massacred anyone with powers. Zélie is a diviner whose mother was killed in the purge. When she gets a chance to restore magic, she has to lead a revolution against an empire that wants her kind extinct.
Adeyemi draws on West African mythology to create a vibrant world where oppression is literal—the maji were systematically killed for what they were born with. The anger driving this book is righteous and real.
11. The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Jude was seven when she and her sisters were stolen from the human world and brought to the faerie realm. Now she’s mortal in a land that despises mortals, without magic in a court where power is everything. Her only path is through—and that means playing a political game where the fae have centuries of practice and she has nothing but cunning.
Black’s faerie politics are as vicious as anything in Red Rising, and Jude’s willingness to get her hands dirty makes her a protagonist Brown fans will appreciate.
12. Banished by Jacques du Preez
One thousand years after something shattered global civilization, humanity survives in isolated Citadels ruled by genetic hierarchy. The Five Houses control everything, and the Wastelands beyond are populated by exiled clans.
Kael Ashborn is an engineer who falls in love with the wrong woman—the heir to House Caelum, the surveillance power that monitors everyone. When their forbidden romance is discovered, Kael is exiled to die.
He doesn’t.
Banished follows Kael’s transformation from invisible citizen to revolutionary leader, uniting Wasteland clans against the oppressive Houses. The class warfare is front and center, the political intrigue builds across books, and the epic saga scope allows for the kind of transformation that Red Rising fans crave.
Read Banished Free on Kindle Unlimited →
Finding Your Next Obsession
What all these books share is a refusal to accept that the powerful deserve their power. Their protagonists look at systems designed to keep them down and decide—sometimes rashly, sometimes strategically—to burn it all.
The best political sci-fi doesn’t just tell us that oppression is bad. It shows us what it costs to fight it. It makes us feel the weight of impossible choices. And it asks whether the person who emerges from revolution is still the person who started it.
If Red Rising taught you that the Society needs to fall, these books will remind you that every empire has its Gold, and someone is always carrying the fire.
Which books would you add to this list?