If what drew you in was how the city-dwelling women in The Shore of Women engineer society—using the image of a goddess to keep Arvil’s tribe in line while exiling Birana—then Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country will hit the same notes. It’s another rigorously imagined matriarchy after collapse, where women’s cities and men’s garrisons coexist under carefully managed rules. Like Birana’s questioning of the rites she was raised with, Stavia gradually uncovers the social architecture and moral compromises behind her community’s peace. The intrigue isn’t about gadgets—it’s about culture, secrecy, and the costs of a designed future.

If you were moved by Birana and Arvil’s fragile alliance—born from exile, need, and the risk of crossing a forbidden divide—Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness offers a similarly profound relationship. As Genly Ai and Estraven trek across the ice, their wary cooperation deepens into trust and a redefinition of self, much like how Birana and Arvil’s partnership grows beyond the binaries enforced by the goddess-ruled cities and the wandering male bands. It’s about learning the other’s language—cultural and emotional—until survival becomes shared purpose.

If the grim fascination for you was watching how the women’s cities in The Shore of Women maintain dominance—projecting a divine Mother to keep men fearful and separate—then The Power will grip you. When girls worldwide develop the ability to deliver electrical shocks, social orders invert and new hierarchies arise. As with the priestesses who orchestrate men’s beliefs from behind the goddess’s veil, Alderman shows how quickly liberation can harden into systems of control, forcing characters to navigate complicity and resistance.

If the ritual and theology of The Shore of Women—the Mother cult, the carefully staged "miracles" used to steer Arvil’s clan, and Birana’s crisis of faith after exile—hooked you, Butler’s Parable of the Sower will resonate. Lauren Olamina crafts Earthseed while surviving a collapsing America, testing how belief can be both a survival tool and a responsibility. Where the goddess in Sargent’s world is a lever of social control, Earthseed is a living philosophy forged on the road, raising the same tough questions about faith, agency, and community-making.

If you were absorbed by the inner lives in The Shore of Women—Birana weighing loyalty to her city against compassion for Arvil, Arvil struggling with shame and awe under the goddess’s gaze—The Sparrow offers that same psychological intensity. Father Emilio Sandoz’s mission to another world unravels into trauma, guilt, and hard-won understanding, much like how Sargent’s protagonists are remade by choices that pit love, belief, and survival against one another. It’s harrowing, humane, and deeply introspective.