Best Dystopian Action Sci-Fi Books Like Red Rising

Red Rising turned an entire generation of readers into revolutionaries, following Darrow as he infiltrates the ruling Gold elite from within to tear down a brutal, color-coded caste system from the inside out. It's the ultimate underdog story: one person against an entire entrenched power structure. If that's the kind of fire you're chasing, here are five more books about outsiders and underdogs taking on corrupt elites and rigged systems.

1. Devil in the Pale Moonlight — Devil in the Pale Moonlight taps into the exact same vein that makes Red Rising so compelling: an underdog hero standing up to a powerful, entrenched elite that never expected to be challenged from below. Both stories thrive on the tension of someone who isn't supposed to have a voice or a chance forcing their way into rooms of power and refusing to play by the rules that were built to keep them out. If Darrow's fight against the Golds lit a fire in you, Devil in the Pale Moonlight is the next book that will keep it burning.

2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins — Katniss Everdeen remains one of the defining underdog heroes in modern dystopian fiction, a girl from the poorest district thrown into a televised death match designed by the ruling Capitol to keep the districts in line. Like Red Rising, it's a story about turning the very spectacle meant to control you into the spark that brings a corrupt system down.

3. Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson (The Reckoners) — In a world where superpowered Epics rule with absolute, often cruel authority, a resistance of ordinary humans fights back with nothing but planning, grit, and stolen tech. It has the same scrappy-underdog-versus-godlike-elite energy as Red Rising, just filtered through a superhero lens.

4. Legend by Marie Lu — Set in a divided, dystopian future America, Legend follows a prodigy soldier and a top-wanted criminal from opposite sides of a rigid class system who end up questioning everything they've been told about the elite in charge. The class-warfare tension and fast-moving action will feel very familiar to Red Rising fans.

5. Scythe by Neal Shusterman — In a world that has conquered death itself, a select class of Scythes holds the ultimate power over who lives and who doesn't, and two teenage apprentices start to realize just how corrupt that power has become. It shares Red Rising's fascination with what unchecked power does to the people who hold it, and the courage it takes for someone inside the system to finally push back.

Each of these books captures a different piece of what makes Red Rising so gripping: the rage against an unfair system, the thrill of an underdog outsmarting the powerful, and the hope that one person really can bring down an empire. Start with Devil in the Pale Moonlight for the closest match to Darrow's fight against the elite, then keep the rebellion going with the rest of the list.