If the alternating forward/backward timelines and that final chair revelation in Use of Weapons hooked you, you’ll love Rajaniemi’s caper of memory heists and masked identities. Like Zakalwe’s past bleeding into his present while Diziet Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw maneuver him toward an endgame, Jean le Flambeur claws back stolen pieces of himself across exotic societies and mind-bending tech. It rewards the same patient, clue-hunting reading—every withheld truth snaps into place with delicious inevitability.

Cheradenine Zakalwe’s brutal efficiency on Special Circumstances errands—and the moral fallout Sma keeps half-concealed—has a clear echo in Takeshi Kovacs. Like Zakalwe, Kovacs is a weapon aimed by others, shuttled between worlds to crack impossible problems, and forced to decide when the mission’s ends no longer justify the means. If you appreciated the razor-edged action, cynical wit, and ethically messy choices around interventions, this will scratch the same itch.

You watched Culture Minds and Special Circumstances play chess with peoples’ fates while Sma and the drone nudge Zakalwe toward outcomes that may or may not be righteous. Leckie dives deep into similar questions: What does a just intervention look like? Who gets to decide? As Breq navigates the Radch’s imperial machinery, you’ll find the same coolly argued dilemmas, sharp political maneuvering, and the uneasy sense that even benevolence can become a weapon.

If the revelation about Zakalwe’s past—and what that infamous chair truly meant—left you re-scanning earlier chapters, Wolfe’s triptych will delight you. Across mirrored narratives on the twin worlds of Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix, the ground keeps shifting: doubles, imposture, and colonial myths collide until identity itself feels like a constructed weapon. It’s that same slow-burn dawning horror when a life story turns out to be a meticulously engineered mask.

Zakalwe’s transformation—from raw, damaged soldier to exquisitely honed instrument—carries the charge of watching willpower reforge a shattered psyche. Bester’s Gully Foyle is cut from a similar, mesmerizing cloth: fueled by trauma and obsession, he reshapes himself and the world around him with sheer, frightening intent. If you were gripped by the intimate, unsettling psychology beneath the Culture’s grand stage, Foyle’s metamorphosis will hit just as hard.