It received positive reviews from Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Common Sense Media, and Kirkus, as well as a mediocre review from The Guardian. Ruby breaks out of a 'rehabilitation camp' in which she has been imprisoned and teams up with a rag-tag group of fellow camp escapees to find the Slip Kid, a leader who offers shelter to young people in danger and who knows the secret to control one's powers. The novel's and series' title was changed from Black is the Color to The Darkest Minds in November 2011. The Darkest Minds, published December 18, 2012, is the first novel of the series.

The Rising Dark: A Darkest Minds Collection, published Januby Quercus Children's Books, is a collection of short stories that take place before The Darkest Minds. It takes place during the aftermath of a fictional disease known as 'IAAN' which killed most of the children in the United States and left the surviving children with supernatural abilities. The series follows a teenage girl named Ruby, a 16-year-old girl with special abilities that she has only just begun to understand.

The first novel, The Darkest Minds, spent eight weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list for a children's series, peaking at number three. The series was first published in the United States in 2012 by Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Publishing Worldwide. The Darkest Minds, written by American author Alexandra Bracken, is a young adult dystopian fiction series consisting of four novels and several novellas compiled in Through the Dark. Hyperion Books for Children / Disney Publishing Worldwide

The darkest minds series in order