Red Rising

Red Rising is a 2014 dystopian science fiction novel by the American author Pierce Brown and the first book in the series of the same name. Set in the future on Mars, it follows a lowborn miner named Darrow as he infiltrates the ranks of the elite Golds.

The society is a rigid hierarchy in which people are born into one of fourteen colours that determine physical characteristics and specialised roles, and it is ruled by the Golds, who are described as mentally and physically superior. Reds are the lowest-status labourers, working underground on a project whose purpose they have been given wrongly, which is the deception that sets the plot in motion.

The book's premise therefore combines a caste system with a specific lie. Darrow's work is meaningful to him because he believes it will benefit his children, and discovering that the surface has been inhabited for generations converts his labour into exploitation and his loyalty into a mistake. It received generally positive reviews, and the series became one of the better-known dystopian science fiction sequences of its decade.