Red Rising fans have been going through it waiting for Red God, the seventh and final book in the Red Rising series. As it turns out, author Pierce Brown has been admittedly “deeply in the trenches,” too, writing it.
Speaking to Times Radio at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 18, Brown gave the most candid picture yet of where the book stands. He also shared what is keeping him from finishing it and why he is not willing to let it go until he is fully satisfied.
It has been a significant week for Brown in every sense. The night before Cheltenham, he was in Birmingham at a Waterstones event, where he spoke about the newly confirmed Paramount film adaptation of Red Rising and what the team is trying to protect as the project develops. The film news dominated coverage of his appearance on the festival circuit, but for readers who have been following the wait for Red God, the Cheltenham update was extra important.
Light Bringer, the sixth book in the series, was published in July 2023. Brown had at various points discussed the possibility of Red God arriving in the first half of 2026 or by summer of that year. In a March 2026 interview with Maude Garrett, he confirmed it was not coming that summer, and for us fans tracking every update closely, that was a significant deflation.
More recently, on the Wildmen Podcast last month, Brown revealed that the ’Hat of Death’ had already been pulled for Red God, and that the result stalled his writing for a period. The latest update this week had to do with the saga finale and how Pierce is grading it.
Brown grades current Red God draft a “B plus,” and he wants the A
At Cheltenham, when asked how far into the writing he is, Brown reached for an analogy from another book.
"Deep in the trenches," he said, comparing his state to the subject matter of Angel Down, Daniel Kraus' novel set in World War I that won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. "I'm a trench rat right now," he added.
The reason the book isn't done yet is not necessarily a shortage of material. Brown said he has put in the work, but his own assessment of what he has is not where it needs to be for a series finale.
"I've done all the work, but it's still a B plus in my mind," he said. He described the core creative problem as one of conviction rather than craft, the need to hold out for the best version of an idea rather than accepting a good enough one.
"So much of it was about, I think, forcing yourself to reject, in American terms, a B plus idea with belief and conviction that you'll find the A. And so I don't want to end my series with a B plus," he said.
I suppose that is exactly what we want to hear as fans. The fact that Brown is holding the bar that high and refusing to move it, is reassuring in a really good way. He knows what this series means to the people who have read it, and he is not willing to hand it in until it meets his own standard for what a conclusion to that epic saga should feel like.
Brown says his readers have given him the ability to focus properly
Brown also pointed out how differently this book is being written compared to earlier ones in the series. He acknowledged that in past years, economic necessity meant he was writing through book tours, staying up late after signing events to get pages done. That is no longer how it works.
“And now I would say that my readers have given me a degree of financial security, which allows me to compartmentalize better,” he said. “In the past and on past book tours, I would be staying up almost all night writing after doing signing lines. And I'm not in my 20s anymore. I just don't have the legs.”
When asked directly when Red God will be out, Brown kept it simple. "When it's ready," he said.
The Red Rising Saga in order is Red Rising (2014), Golden Son (2015), Morning Star (2016), Iron Gold (2019), Dark Age (2019), and Light Bringer (2023). Winter Is Coming previously reached out to Brown's publisher at Random House who confirmed Red God does not have a release window yet.
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