If the Institute’s House wars, Darrow’s ascent under House Mars, and those cutthroat war games hooked you, you’ll love how Ender Wiggin is pushed up the Battle School ladder—commanding toon after toon in zero‑g battles that feel like Darrow’s war room come to life. The way Ender outthinks opponents, breaks unwritten rules, and faces ethically fraught simulations mirrors Darrow’s own tactical leaps and compromises at the Institute.

You liked watching Darrow get carved into a weapon and survive the Institute’s trials with Mustang and Sevro. In The Poppy War, Rin survives Sinegard’s merciless classes, duels, and hazing—and then the classroom ends and a horrific war begins. Like Darrow’s transition from school games to scorched-earth campaigns, Rin’s choices escalate into devastating, morally thorny warfare.

If Eo’s execution, the Reds’ pit mines, and Darrow infiltrating the Golds’ world to smash a caste system gripped you, Katniss’s fight from District 12 to the arena will hit the same nerve. The spectacle of orchestrated violence, media manipulation, and the spark of rebellion feel like Darrow’s Institute pageantry and rigged Proctor politics—only here the districts face the Capitol’s cruel theater head-on.

Darrow lies, manipulates Houses, and makes hard calls—allying with Mustang, using Sevro’s Howlers, outplaying the Jackal—because the world demands it. In The Blade Itself, you’ll meet Glokta, Logen, and Jezal, whose choices are just as thorny and self‑serving. The back‑room deals and brutal reckonings echo Darrow’s moral compromises and the grisly stakes of carving out power.

If Darrow’s long con—posing as a Gold, currying favor, and playing the Sovereign’s game—was your jam, Baru’s ascent through the Masquerade’s bureaucracy is a sharper, colder blade. Watching her weaponize economics and law the way Darrow weaponizes House politics scratches the same itch: conspiracies, double‑deals, and a plan to burn the empire down from the inside.