How long does it take to read the Red Rising series?
Pierce Brown · 6 books
At an average reading speed of 250 words a minute, all 6 books of Red Rising take about 90 hours to read. The unabridged audiobooks run 145 hours at 1x, or 96 hours at 1.5x.
Every Red Rising book but the last is longer than the one before. The first three form the original trilogy and take about 35 hours together. Iron Gold opens a second arc with several narrators, and Dark Age, the longest, runs almost 34 hours as an audiobook.
Average is about 250 WPM. Measure yours in two minutes and every time on this page recalculates.
Every book, timed
| Book | Words | Read | Listen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Rising | ~150,660 | 10h 3m | 16h 12m |
| Golden Son | ~177,165 | 11h 49m | 19h 3m |
| Morning Star | ~203,050 | 13h 32m | 21h 50m |
| Iron Gold | ~217,465 | 14h 30m | 23h 23m |
| Dark Age | ~315,890 | 21h 4m | 33h 58m |
| Light Bringer | ~280,240 | 18h 41m | 30h 8m |
How much to read a day
At 250 words a minute, to finish the whole series:
Have a deadline in mind? The pages-per-day calculator works it out for any date.
How we measured it
Method: audiobook estimate. Estimated from the unabridged audiobooks, most of them narrated by Tim Gerard Reynolds, at 155 words a minute. The dramatized adaptations of the same books run to different lengths and weren't used.
Part of our study of the 100 most popular books, last checked November 2026. Reading times assume steady reading; editions, translations and your own pace all move them.
See how long it really takes you
Log each book in Parch as you read. It tracks your pages, sessions and streak, so you'll know your real pace, and how long the next one will take.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to read the Red Rising series?
About 90 hours at an average reading speed of 250 words a minute: 112 hours at 200 and 75 hours at 300. That covers all 6 books, from Red Rising to Light Bringer.
How many words are in the Red Rising series?
About 1.3 million words across 6 books. The longest is Dark Age (315,890); the shortest is Red Rising (150,660). That's estimated from the unabridged audiobook at a narration pace of 155 words a minute, so treat it as close, not exact.
How long are the audiobooks?
About 145 hours unabridged at 1x for the whole series: 96h 23m at 1.5x and 72h 17m at 2x.
How many pages a day to finish the Red Rising series in a month?
About 163 pages a day, or 3h of reading a day at an average pace. That assumes about 4,889 pages at 275 words a page; real page counts vary by edition.
Which Red Rising book is the longest?
Dark Age, at just under 34 hours as an audiobook: about 21 hours of reading. Red Rising itself is the shortest, at about 10 hours.
Is the Red Rising series finished?
Not yet. Six books are out, ending with Light Bringer (2023). Pierce Brown is writing a seventh and final book, Red God, which had no release date as of November 2026.