Books like Red Rising, according to Reddit

The read-alike list

Ranked by co-mention strength — how often each book shares a thread with Red Rising, normalized so ubiquitous books don't dominate.

#1

Dune

Frank Herbert

Paul Atreides survives his family's massacre on a desert planet and becomes the messiah the empire engineered him to be, then has to live with it.

309 shared threads

#2

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries)

Martha Wells

A security android with no interest in gender, romance, or heroics just wants to watch its shows, and ends up saving its clients from a conspiracy anyway.

266 shared threads

#3

Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card

A child prodigy recruited into Battle School at six ends up commanding real war fleets, believing until the end that it's all just a simulation.

192 shared threads

#4

Hyperion

Dan Simmons

Seven pilgrims travel together to a planet that kills, each one carrying the private story of why they volunteered to go.

289 shared threads

#5

Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovsky

A nanovirus meant to uplift monkeys lands on spiders instead, and eight thousand years later the last human survivors arrive looking for a new Earth.

245 shared threads

#6

Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir

A dying astronaut wakes up alone on a spaceship with amnesia, two corpses for company, and Earth's one shot at survival riding on him.

153 shared threads

#7

The Martian

Andy Weir

A botanist gets left for dead on Mars after a dust storm and has to grow his own food to survive until the next mission arrives, years later.

161 shared threads

#8

The Three-Body Problem

Liu Cixin

A disillusioned physicist's daughter answers a signal from another star and invites the invasion of Earth out of spite for humanity.

174 shared threads

#9

Leviathan Wakes

James S. A. Corey

A ship crew and a washed-up detective cross paths after an ice-hauler is destroyed — book one of The Expanse.

91 shared threads

#10

The Fifth Season

N. K. Jemisin

An orogene comes home to find her son beaten to death and her daughter gone, the same day a continent starts splitting apart.

117 shared threads

#11

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Becky Chambers

A ragtag crew tunnels a hole through space for a living, and the alien passenger they're ferrying turns the trip into a slow-burn found-family story.

127 shared threads

#12

Foundation

Isaac Asimov

A mathematician predicts the empire's collapse centuries out and plants a colony at the galaxy's edge to shrink the coming dark age from thirty thousand years to one.

120 shared threads

The overlap, in numbers

Where each pairing actually shows up. Click through for the full Reddit verdict on each book.

1. #1 Dune by Frank Herbert — 309 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
2. #2 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells — 266 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
3. #3 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card — 192 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
4. #4 Hyperion by Dan Simmons — 289 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
5. #5 Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky — 245 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
6. #6 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir — 153 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
7. #7 The Martian by Andy Weir — 161 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
8. #8 The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin — 174 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
9. #9 Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey — 91 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
10. #10 The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin — 117 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
11. #11 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers — 127 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
12. #12 Foundation by Isaac Asimov — 120 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF