If what gripped you in God Emperor of Dune was Leto II’s relentless philosophical probing—his desert-dry sermons on fate, control, and what humanity must become—then Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness will speak to you. Like Leto’s dialogues with Duncan and Siona, Genly Ai’s exchanges with Estraven on Gethen peel back politics and myth to interrogate what loyalty, gender, and nationhood really mean. The emotional trek across the Gobrin Ice mirrors the stark, ascetic trials around Leto’s Citadel, while the cool, essayistic interludes echo the God Emperor’s own ruminations on power and truth.

Leto II’s millennia-long Golden Path and his near-omniscient nudging of humanity’s destiny find a grand mirror in A Fire Upon the Deep. Where Leto plays god over the Empire and the Fish Speakers, Vinge gives you literal Powers whose stratified "Zones of Thought" determine what minds can become. The vast stakes—like the Blight’s apocalyptic spread—echo Leto’s terror of stagnation, and characters such as Ravna and Pham Nuwen wrestle with choices that reshape eras, much as Siona’s testing and the Duncan gholas ripple across Leto’s thousand-year designs.

If you relished the knife-edged politics around Leto’s court—the Bene Gesserit schemes, Ixian no-chambers, and the tightrope of keeping the Fish Speakers loyal while breeding rebellion through Siona—then The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a perfect fit. Baru infiltrates an empire the way the Sisterhood infiltrates bloodlines, weaponizing finance, census data, and etiquette like Sardaukar blades. The compromises she makes to outmaneuver her rivals will recall Leto’s own cold bargains, from tolerating the Tleilaxu’s Duncan cycles to orchestrating assassinations that serve a larger plan.

Leto II turns himself into a near-immortal tyrant for the Golden Path, sacrificing intimacy, his body, and countless lives to secure a future he alone foresees. The Dispossessed probes the same ethical knife’s edge through Shevek’s decision to share an invention (the ansible) that can bind worlds—and empires—together. As Leto weighs the Fish Speakers’ social order against human unpredictability, Shevek weighs Anarres’s austere freedom against Urras’s seductive hierarchy. Both books force you to sit with power’s costs, not just its outcomes.

If the draw was living inside the mind of a tyrant—Leto II, the worm-bodied God Emperor who justifies cruelty for humanity’s survival—then Jorg of Ancrath will hook you. Prince of Thorns puts you in the head of a prince who conquers by terror, much as Leto rules through awe and inevitability. While Leto stages Duncan gholas and Siona’s trials to sculpt the future, Jorg engineers brutal set pieces to bend a fractured realm to his will. Both protagonists are magnetic, unforgiving, and terrifyingly clear about what they’re willing to do.