If what hooked you in Dawn was Lilith’s negotiation with the Oankali—learning to read their biology, customs, and motives—then you’ll love how Children of Time builds an entire arachnid society from the ground up. As the human arkship Gilgamesh limps through space (much like Lilith’s cohort awakening to an altered fate), the novel tracks Portia and her spider kin developing language, tools, and ethics. The cross-species encounter culminates in a tense, thoughtful first contact that echoes Lilith and Nikanj’s fraught trust-building and the challenge of communicating across truly alien minds.

In Dawn, the Oankali’s "trade" tests the line between salvation and domination, much like Lilith’s struggle to lead other humans while doubting the terms of their rescue. Le Guin’s novella puts that tension front and center: on Athshe, the native Selver resists human exploitation led by the brutal Davidson. As in Lilith’s uneasy role between captors and her own people, mediation and revolt collide here—raising the same hard questions about who gets to decide a future, and at what moral cost.

If Nikanj’s genetic interventions and the Oankali’s bio-tech unsettled and fascinated you, Binti offers a similarly intimate, ethical dilemma. Binti leaves home for Oomza Uni, is caught between humans and the Meduse, and undergoes a profound physical change that enables communication—much like Lilith’s enhancements aboard the living ship. The fragile truce Binti brokers with Okwu mirrors Lilith’s attempts to win trust without surrendering her humanity.

Like Dawn’s early chapters—Lilith waking alone, tested and remade by forces she barely understands—Annihilation burrows into the psyche. The Biologist’s expedition into Area X, the hypnotic control of the Psychologist, and the descent into the “tower” mirror the disorientation and self-reassembly Lilith undergoes in captivity with the Oankali. It’s the same eerie intimacy: you’re inside a mind adapting—or not—to an alien logic.

If you were gripped by Lilith’s mission to shepherd humans back to a changed Earth and survive under Oankali terms, Semiosis tracks generations of colonists learning to live with Stevland, a sapient plant that can help—or destroy—them. Like Lilith training sleepers for a dangerous rebirth, these settlers negotiate food, shelter, and safety through uneasy alliances, discovering that endurance demands both humility and hard choices.