If Cija’s mission to seduce Zerd and survive the treacherous courts around Atlan gripped you, you’ll love following Phèdre nó Delaunay in Kushiel’s Dart. Like Cija, Phèdre uses wit, allure, and razor-edged observation to navigate conspiracies that could topple nations. Courtly alliances, covert agendas, and intimate betrayals echo Cija’s tightrope between desire and duty—only here the web of intrigue stretches across an entire continent.

Cija is pushed into empire-shaping plots—seducing Zerd, marching with an army on Atlan—and learns how power corrodes and compels. In The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Baru similarly leverages brilliance and duplicity from within a conquering empire, sacrificing personal ties as she maneuvers through auditors, governors, and coups. If the ruthless chess of Cija’s world fascinated you, Baru’s calculated betrayals will hit the same nerve—hard.

Cija’s morally tangled choices—shaped by isolation, then thrust into Zerd’s campaign—mirror Bellis Coldwine’s coolly pragmatic, sometimes troubling decisions in The Scar. Pressed into a journey aboard a floating pirate city, Bellis navigates factions, monsters, and grand designs with a survivor’s steel. If you were drawn to Cija’s compromise and calculation amid conquest, Bellis’s hard-edged resilience in an alien, baroque seascape will enthrall you.

If Cija’s diary voice—her raw confessions about seducing Zerd, her fear on the march toward Atlan—pulled you close, This Is How You Lose the Time War will feel like a secret passed hand-to-hand. Told through evolving letters between rival agents, it delivers that same intimate, self-revealing immediacy, turning private reports and confessions into a taut, aching bond that alters the fate of worlds.

If the layered cultures of Atlan—the city’s ritual, the northern armies under Zerd, the sense of a vast, old world—captivated you, The Priory of the Orange Tree offers an even broader canvas. You’ll explore courts, priesthoods, and dragon lore across continents, with rival powers colliding and alliances forged under existential threat—much like the broad geopolitical pressures bearing down on Cija’s fate.