If you loved how Sira di Sarc defused an interstellar incident in Hellspark by actually doing fieldwork and cracking the locals' communication, you'll get a thrill from Embassytown. Avice Benner Cho navigates the Ariekei—aliens whose twin-voiced Language can only speak truth—as human "Ambassadors" become the sole bridge. When a new Ambassador breaks the rules of meaning, the entire city tilts toward disaster, and the solution hinges on semantics, metaphor, and cultural insight every bit as deft as Sira's negotiations.

Like Sira's culturally savvy interventions in Hellspark, Genly Ai's mission on the icy world of Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness is won (or lost) through understanding people, not gadgets. Watching Genly and Estravan cross the winter and bridge political suspicion echoes the way Sira reads custom, etiquette, and language to keep factions from blowing up first contact—a soft-SF triumph where empathy is the prime tool.

If the way Hellspark weighed treaties, exploitation, and the right of a people to define themselves grabbed you, The Color of Distance will hit the same nerve. Stranded xenobiologist Juna survives by learning the Tendu’s biology-rooted language and customs from the inside, then faces the hard call of how (or whether) to open contact without repeating the mistakes Sira had to head off on that newly contacted world.

If you enjoyed how Sira unraveled an anthropologist’s death and the cascade of misinterpretations in Hellspark, try Golden Witchbreed. Envoy Lynne de Lisle Christie is posted to Orthe, where bombings, forged relics of the "Golden Witchbreed," and subtle etiquette traps threaten to tip diplomacy into war. The investigation hinges on reading culture correctly—exactly the kind of cluework Sira excels at.

If the witty bargaining and fast verbal footwork in Hellspark made you grin, The Android's Dream doubles down on the comedic side of interstellar diplomacy. After a diplomatic meeting implodes over an outrageous breach of etiquette, ex-soldier Harry Creek has to navigate alien laws, sacred livestock, and bureaucratic traps to stop a war—a madcap, quippy echo of Sira’s sharp-tongued, culture-savvy saves.