10 books like Red Rising
Red Rising works because it fuses three things: a rigged caste system worth burning down, a school that kills its pupils, and a narrator who thinks several moves ahead of everyone around him. The books below each pick up at least one of those threads, from Roman-flavoured academies to solar-system politics and slow-burning revenge.
Updated September 2026
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Brutal academies where the training is the real war
The Will of the Many by James Islington 2023
A hidden-identity protagonist claws his way into a Roman-styled hierarchy's elite school and survives by outthinking everyone, much as Darrow does at the Institute; the tone is colder and more puzzle-box, with less battlefield carnage.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card 1985
The tactical-genius child pushed through escalating war games is the template Red Rising openly nods to; it's shorter, chillier and far more interested in what the training does to a mind than in blood on the grass.
The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang 2018
Begins with a poor outsider testing into a cruel military academy and ends somewhere much darker, with the same willingness to let a protagonist become monstrous; the setting is a fantasy China at war rather than a terraformed Mars.
Revenge against a caste system that made you
The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter 2017
A low-caste young man with one obsessive purpose trains himself into a weapon against the nobles who took everything, at Red Rising's relentless pace; the magic and the Xhosa-inspired world put it firmly in fantasy.
Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia 2015
Built on a rigid caste order where being born untouchable is a death sentence, and centred on a man who discovers his own place in it was a lie; the fighting is sword-and-demon rather than pulse-armour and razors.
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie 2006
Shares the cynicism about who really runs things and the same relish for violence and betrayal among people you've grown fond of; there's no space and no rebellion yet, just three ugly lives converging.
Space opera with empires, factions and interplanetary politics
Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio 2018
A first-person account of a noble-born narrator confessing how he became a legend and a monster, drenched in the same Roman imperial trappings; it moves slowly and broods where Red Rising sprints.
Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey 2011
Gives you the Mars-Earth-Belter grudges and resource politics that underpin Darrow's solar system, done in grimy detail; it follows working stiffs and a detective, not a chosen insurgent.
Dune by Frank Herbert 1965
One of the acknowledged ancestors of Red Rising, with feudal houses, a desert underclass and a young heir weaponising prophecy; the pleasure is in scheming and ecology rather than combat set pieces.
The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold 1986
Another undersized protagonist who wins by improvising outrageous plans faster than his enemies can react, in a militarised aristocracy; it's warm and often very funny, and nobody's heart gets broken quite so deliberately.
If you also liked…
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
- Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Questions
- Is anything here as violent as Red Rising?
- The Poppy War goes considerably further, with atrocity sequences that are genuinely hard going, and The Blade Itself is unsparing about torture. The Warrior's Apprentice are the mild end of this list.
- I mainly want more of the Institute. Where do I start?
- The Will of the Many is the nearest match — a Roman-shaped hierarchy, a deadly academy and a narrator keeping a lethal secret.
- Do I have to read science fiction to get the same feeling?
- No — The Rage of Dragons delivers the rigged caste system and the rise against it in fantasy settings. The revenge and the class fury translate perfectly well without spaceships.