If you were hooked by Manet’s dogged hunt through the God-King’s capital—interrogations, coded relics, and a final truth that guts the official story—then you’ll love how Shara Komayd works Bulikov in City of Stairs. Shara picks apart a diplomat’s murder and, in the process, unearths suppressed histories of the Continent’s “dead” divinities, much like Manet’s pursuit of the Mother shreds the God-King’s version of the past. It’s the same sharp, mission-first momentum, with each conversation prying open another sealed door.

If the masked ministries, edicts, and backroom schemes around the God-King pulled you in—especially as Manet discovers whose loyalties are theater—then The Traitor Baru Cormorant will hit the same nerve. Baru burrows into the Masquerade’s bureaucracy to break it apart, playing auditors, nobles, and rebels against one another with the same chilly precision that echoes the court games Manet uncovers. Like Manet, Baru learns power isn’t just taken; it’s accounted for—paid in blood, lies, and identity.

If you liked how The Seventh Perfection keeps you street-level with Manet—one city, one interrogation at a time, every exchange widening the crack in the official truth—The City & the City offers that same intimate scope. Inspector Borlú’s case threads through Besžel and Ul Qoma, where citizens "unsee" each other by law, and each interview functions like Manet’s encounters: the world’s real shape emerges only as people talk around the forbidden.

Only hearing other people’s words while following Manet makes truth slippery in The Seventh Perfection—everyone edits the past, and you feel the gaps. In Annihilation, the biologist’s field journal does the same work: omissions, evasions, and altered perceptions turn the expedition into Area X into a hall of mirrors. As with Manet’s interviews about the Mother and the God-King, you’re forced to read between the lines to find the story no one wants to say aloud.

If that late-game reveal about the God-King’s mythmaking and Manet’s pursuit made you retroactively re-read every exchange, Use of Weapons delivers that same gut-punch. Special Circumstances agent Cheradenine Zakalwe’s missions unfold in crisscrossing timelines that seem clear—until the closing turn reframes who he is and what any of it meant. It’s the same thrill of having the story slide into focus only at the end, transforming a driven quest into something far more haunting.