Pierce Brown

Pierce Brown was born on January 28, 1988, in Denver, Colorado, and spent his childhood and teen years on the move: he lived in seven different states. He earned a degree in political science and economics from Pepperdine University in California, then bounced between political campaigns and tech startups.

All the while, he was writing. He finished six novels before Red Rising, and more than 110 literary agents turned him down. The breakthrough came with the story of a miner on Mars. Del Rey published Red Rising on January 28, 2014, the day the author turned 26. At the time he was working in NBC's page program in Burbank.

The premise: Darrow is a Red, from the lowest caste of a society sorted by color, and spends his life digging under the surface of Mars, sure he is preparing the planet for future generations. When he learns the lie behind that work, he takes on a near-suicidal mission: to be remade inside and out so he can infiltrate the Golds, the elite that rules the solar system. The book blends an elite academy, war and political intrigue, with names and symbols drawn from ancient Rome and Greek myth, and Darrow narrates it in the first person, present tense.

Even before release, in February 2014, Universal bought the film rights in a seven-figure auction, with Marc Forster set to direct and Brown himself writing the script. The movie never happened, and the rights went back to the author. In bookstores, the trilogy closed with Golden Son (2015) and Morning Star (2016), and the three books earned Brown Goodreads Choice Awards: best debut author in 2014 and science fiction in 2015 and 2016.

In 2018 the series entered a second phase. Iron Gold is set ten years after the trilogy and widens the lens to several narrators, showing the cost of winning a war and then having to govern. Dark Age followed in 2019 and Light Bringer in 2023. The seventh book, Red God, has been announced but still has no confirmed date. In Brazil, Globo Alt published only the first trilogy; in Spanish, the whole series came out as Amanecer rojo.

The universe also moved into other formats. Red Rising: Sons of Ares is a six-issue comic about the rebellion's past. In 2025 Brown announced The Book of Lorn, a hybrid of novella and graphic novel with art by Giannis Milonogiannis, released in chapters on Patreon.

On television, he said in 2018 that he was developing a series, but in March 2026 he confirmed the project would not go forward. Sales reached 6 million copies by September 2024, and Red Rising remains one of the most widely read science fiction series of its generation.