You enjoyed Red Rising by Pierce Brown and are hoping to find more books that will take you deep into a dystopian society, deliver some page-turning plotting, and explore class division and conflict. You are in the right place.
Science fiction is a great place to imaging the eventual result of today’s stupidity. Dystopian sci-fi shows us a bleak look at what a world might be like if our worst tendencies are allowed to rule. Red Rising is set amid a cast system on a terraformed Mars. It explores oppression, revenge for same, social justice, and corruption. It also keeps those pages turning. It’s a good read that makes you think.
Here are 10 books like Red Rising that will take you deep into a dystopian future, make you think, and keep you reading long after you should have turned the lights out.
Ridley Walker
by Russel Hoban
Get ready for a challenging work. Written entirely in the future dialect of the people who populate this dystopian future, this story is told from the first-person point of view of Ridley Walker who has no knowledge of what came before or why his world is so primitive. He slowly uncovers what happened as he journeys across a scarred landscape. The writing is intense and genius. This is a piece of ambitious beauty. My favorite here, by far.
The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
You have probably seen the movies. Those movies are based on this series of books set in a dystopian future where the government controls the population through brutal games. Children fight to the death while demonstrating that the society is poisoned by oppression, which inevitably leads to rebellion.
The first book in this series is currently free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited so if you aren’t sure you want your dystopia in YA form, start there.
Divergent
by Veronica Roth
In this gripping YA trilogy, society is divided into five factions, each based on the cultivation of a specific human virtue. It is set in a post-apocalyptic future version of Chicago.
The protagonist — Beatrice — is faced with a choice: Stay with her family in the selfless Abnegation faction or try something new. The story explores themes of identity, societal structure, and resistance, much like “Red Rising.” And the pace is quick to keep you turning those pages.
Ender’s Game
by Orson Scott Card
If you haven’t read this classic yet, it is high time. This novel centers around a young boy — Ender — who is trained through increasingly intense and strategic war games. It is widely hailed as a brilliant study of the psychological and ethical challenges of warfare.
Ender’s story arc follows his increasing skill at tactics and warfare. But Card uses this character study — and the ultimate reveal — to question the ethics and motives of war and the use of children in such conflicts.
The Maze Runner
by James Dashner
This series starts with a group of teens waking up in a mysterious maze, with no memory of the outside world.
Thomas, the teen whose story we follow, is faced with an ever changing maze and a society of boys who have formed their own rules for surviving in there.
Another YA entry into the genre that might be better as a movie.
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
Although an older work — published in 1932 — this novel’s dystopian vision of a genetically-modified society where people are predestined to various social roles resonates with the class divisions seen in “Red Rising.”
Society here is ruled by technology. People are engineered in hatcheries to fit specific societal roles. They are drugged into complacency.
Sound familiar? Maybe it’s time to read it? It’s free!
Golden Son & Morning Star
by Pierce Brown
These are the sequels to “Red Rising” and continue the saga of Darrow and his fight against the oppressive societal structure.
Wool
by Hugh Howey
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where the remnants of humanity live in a giant underground silo, this book explores themes of survival, governance, and rebellion.
Legend
by Marie Lu
This series is set in a dystopian future United States where society has been divided by class.
The story is told from the point of view of Day, the country’s most wanted criminal, and June, a prodigious elite in the military. Thier paths cross following the murder of June’s brother. There is lots of action and a hint of romance, all while exploring themes of class disparity, corruption, and the quest for justice.
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