If you loved how Mari navigates the seasonal rooms using forbidden yōkai strength and cunning, you’ll sink right into Shadow of the Fox. Kagawa’s world teems with kitsune tricksters, oni, and shrine magic, echoing the mythic texture of the Emperor’s palace and its deadly challenges. Like Mari hiding her true nature among human courtiers, Yumeko conceals her kitsune heritage while racing to assemble an ancient prayer—dodging assassins and monsters with the same tense, folkloric danger that made the Winter Room thrum.

Mari’s bid to conquer Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter for a crown—and the way each room forces impossible choices—mirrors the brutal Trials that push Elias to the brink in An Ember in the Ashes. If the relentless urgency of Mari’s tournament hooked you, Elias’s knife-edge missions, betrayals, and split-second gambles against a merciless empire will deliver that same pulse-pounding momentum—with the added heartbreak of loyalties that can’t all survive.

Like Mari concealing her yōkai identity to outmaneuver the emperor’s cruelty and marry Prince Taro, Maia in Spin the Dawn must disguise who she is to survive a cutthroat imperial competition. If the backroom bargaining, shifting loyalties, and tightrope walk between desire and duty in the palace kept you riveted—especially as Taro plots his own path against his father—Lim’s blend of courtly maneuvering, impossible tasks, and forbidden truths will feel deliciously familiar.

If you liked slipping between Mari, Taro, and Akira—seeing the emperor’s oppression of yōkai from clashing angles, the prince’s defiance, and the pull of first love—you’ll love the multi-perspective tension of Three Dark Crowns. Three sisters train to kill or be killed for the crown, their chapters building the same dread and inevitability you felt as Mari advanced room by room, while alliances and betrayals twist expectations the way Akira’s loyalties complicate every choice.

If Mari’s flinty resolve—balancing survival, love for Akira, and a crown within reach—was your favorite part, Forest of a Thousand Lanterns offers a darker, equally magnetic ascent. Xifeng’s climb through a treacherous court echoes the razor-edged choices in the emperor’s palace, where a woman’s power is won with secrecy and sacrifice. The way Mari’s victories in the seasonal rooms carry a cost finds a haunting mirror in Xifeng’s relentless pursuit of destiny.