Books like The Jasmine Throne

S.A. Chakraborty's The City of Brass is set in a world inspired by Middle Eastern and South Asian mythology, following Nahri, a con artist in eighteenth-century Cairo who accidentally summons a djinn warrior and is drawn into the magical city of Daevabad.

Like The Jasmine Throne, the novel builds its fantasy world from non-Western cultural traditions and fills it with political factions maneuvering for power. Both Suri and Chakraborty write political fantasy where alliances shift constantly and no character's loyalties are simple. The City of Brass shares Suri's attention to how colonialism, religious division, and ethnic hierarchy shape the lives of its characters, and both novels feature female protagonists who must learn to wield power they did not ask for.

The romantic elements in Chakraborty's novel are slower to develop and heterosexual rather than sapphic, but the political intrigue and the South Asian and Middle Eastern cultural foundations make this the strongest tonal match. Readers who want another dense, richly built fantasy world anchored in non-Western traditions should start here.

Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree is a standalone epic fantasy that braids together multiple storylines across a world where an ancient evil threatens to return. The novel centers a sapphic romance between two of its protagonists, Queen Sabran and her secret protector Ead Duryan, which mirrors the forbidden connection between Malini and Priya in The Jasmine Throne.

Both novels treat the queer romance as essential to the plot rather than ornamental, and both set that romance against the backdrop of political crisis. Shannon's worldbuilding draws from a wider range of cultural sources than Suri's more focused Indian inspiration, but the scope and ambition match.

The Priory of the Orange Tree is longer and has more point-of-view characters, giving it an even wider canvas, but readers who loved Suri's combination of sapphic romance and politically charged epic fantasy will find the same combination delivered at a larger scale. This is a true doorstopper that rewards patient readers.

R.F. Kuang's The Poppy War draws on Chinese history, specifically the Second Sino-Japanese War, to build a military fantasy that follows Rin, a war orphan who wins admission to an elite military academy and discovers she has shamanic powers.

Like The Jasmine Throne, the novel uses Asian history as the foundation for its fantasy world and is unsparing in its depiction of how empires use violence to maintain control. Both Suri and Kuang write protagonists who gain power at great personal cost and must decide what they are willing to destroy to protect their people. The Poppy War does not have a romance at its center the way The Jasmine Throne does, but it shares the same willingness to make the reader uncomfortable with the moral choices its characters face.

The prose is direct and the pacing is relentless, making this a good pick for readers who want Suri's political and cultural seriousness in a story that moves at a faster clip.

Rebecca Roanhorse's Black Sun is set in a pre-Columbian Americas-inspired world and follows multiple characters converging on the holy city of Tova during the winter solstice. Like The Jasmine Throne, it builds a fantasy world from Indigenous and non-European cultural traditions and centers characters whose identities place them at the margins of power. Roanhorse's novel features a queer protagonist and treats his sexuality as one part of a complex identity rather than the defining characteristic.

Both novels are interested in how religious institutions wield political power and how those on the outside of that power can challenge it. The multi-POV structure mirrors Suri's approach, and both novels use prophecy and ancient magic as tools of political disruption. The setting and cultural sources are completely different from Suri's Indian-inspired world, which makes this a good choice for readers who want the same structural pleasures in a fresh context.

The action sequences are sharper and more cinematic than Suri's more interior style.

Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a novella that packs a political epic into a slim frame. A cleric cataloguing the possessions of a recently deceased empress discovers the hidden story of how that empress, a foreign bride married off to secure a political alliance, quietly dismantled the empire from within. Like The Jasmine Throne, the story centers women who use intelligence and patience to wield power in systems designed to subjugate them.

The political maneuvering is tight and precise, with every detail of the empress's possessions telling part of the larger story. Both Suri and Vo write Asian-inspired fantasy where women's power operates through subtlety and strategy rather than military force, and both are interested in what it costs women to play political games in patriarchal courts. The novella length makes this a quick read, but the density of the storytelling means it lingers.

Start here if you want the political intrigue and gendered power dynamics of The Jasmine Throne in a concentrated dose.

C.L. Clark's The Unbroken is a military fantasy set in a colonial-occupied North African-inspired territory, following Touraine, a soldier conscripted as a child from the colony to fight for the empire that conquered her homeland.

When she is sent back to the colony to help suppress a rebellion, she is caught between loyalty to her military comrades and solidarity with the colonized people who share her blood. Like The Jasmine Throne, the novel is a politically charged fantasy about empire, resistance, and identity, and it features a sapphic romance between Touraine and Princess Luca, who is trying to reform the empire from within. Both Suri and Clark write political fantasy where the romance is tangled up with the power dynamics, and both refuse to simplify the moral positions of their characters.

The colonial framework gives this novel a slightly different political angle than Suri's, but readers who loved the intersection of queer romance and anti-imperial politics in The Jasmine Throne will find the same concerns driving every page here.

Xiran Jay Zhao's Iron Widow is set in a science-fantasy version of China where giant mechs called Chrysalises are piloted by male-female pairs, and the female pilots almost always die in the process. Wu Zetian, based on the real historical empress, refuses to accept that fate and begins tearing down the system that treats women as disposable fuel.

Like The Jasmine Throne, Iron Widow draws on Asian history and mythology to build a world where gender-based oppression is structural, and both novels feature protagonists who choose destruction over submission. Zhao's prose is angrier and more deliberately modern than Suri's, with a voice that reads like it was written to be shouted from a rooftop.

The polyamorous romance adds a different dimension to the queer representation, and the mech-pilot conceit gives the action a different texture than Suri's plant-based magic. This is the pick for readers who want Suri's feminist rage and Asian-inspired worldbuilding turned up to maximum volume in a science-fantasy package.

Tasha Suri's Empire of Sand is the first place readers should look after The Jasmine Throne, because it comes from the same pen and the same well of Mughal-India inspiration. Mehr is the illegitimate daughter of an imperial governor, raised in a court that both covets and fears the desert magic in her blood.

Suri writes the same lush, patient worldbuilding here, with a magic system built on ritual dance and the dreams of sleeping gods rather than sweeping battle scenes. The emotional core is a marriage bound by force and slowly reshaped by trust, and consent sits at the center of every page.

Named to TIME's list of the best fantasy books, this earlier work reads as the quieter, more intimate cousin of the Burning Kingdoms trilogy. Recommended for Jasmine Throne readers who want more of Suri's signature blend of tenderness and imperial menace.

Shannon Chakraborty, author of the Daevabad books, gives Jasmine Throne readers the same richly textured Islamic-world-inspired fantasy in a saltier, funnier register. Amina al-Sirafi is a retired pirate captain of the twelfth-century Indian Ocean, dragged back to sea for one last job by an offer she cannot turn down.

Chakraborty writes with the same care for faith, culture, and place that made the Daevabad trilogy a favorite, and the book carries a mother's weariness that few epic fantasies bother to render. The frame device, in which a scribe records Amina's tale, gives the whole thing the feel of a legend being spun in real time.

It reads as a heist as much as a fantasy, all crew loyalty and old grudges and creatures rising from the deep. Recommended for readers who love Suri's world-building but want a heroine with more miles and more scars.

Seth Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the pick for Jasmine Throne readers who came for the empire-versus-colonized-people tension and want it turned up to a devastating pitch. Baru is a brilliant girl whose island home is swallowed by the Masquerade, an empire that conquers through trade, schooling, and social engineering rather than open war.

She climbs into the heart of that empire as an accountant, planning to burn it down from within, and the cost of that plan sits at the center of everything. Dickinson trades magic for economics, but the emotional engine is pure Suri: a queer heroine forced to weaponize herself against the power that raised her.

The romance here runs quiet and doomed rather than tender. Recommended for readers who want the sharpest, most ruthless version of the anti-imperial story, with a final page that lands like a blade.

Naseem Jamnia's The Bruising of Qilwa is a slim Persian-inspired novella that Jasmine Throne readers can finish in an afternoon and think about for weeks. Firuz is a nonbinary refugee and blood-magic healer who flees genocide in their homeland for the island city-state of Qilwa, only to uncover a strange disease that threatens to reopen the same wounds of prejudice they escaped.

Jamnia builds a queernormative world where identity is simply a fact of life, and the magic runs through blood and bone in a way that echoes the deathless-waters power of Suri's priesthood. The book is small in page count but large in what it asks about migration, belonging, and the ethics of using power on other people.

A finalist for the Crawford, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. Recommended for readers who want Suri's body-magic and refugee themes distilled into one tight, humane package.

G. Willow Wilson's The Bird King is the lyrical historical fantasy Jasmine Throne readers reach for when they want the lushness turned all the way up. Set in 1491 Granada, in the final days of Muslim Iberia, the book follows Fatima, a concubine in the sultan's palace, and her closest friend Hassan, a mapmaker who can draw doors into places that do not exist.

When the Inquisition comes for Hassan, the two flee across a dying kingdom toward a mythical island ruled by the Bird King of Persian legend. Wilson writes prose as ornamented and warm as anything on this shelf, and the friendship at the story's heart carries the same fierce loyalty that binds Suri's women. The empire here is a real one at the edge of ruin, which gives the book an ache that invented fantasy rarely reaches.

Recommended for readers who want beauty, myth, and a story about carving out freedom.

Aparna Verma's The Phoenix King is the India-inspired desert fantasy Jasmine Throne readers will spot as kindred before the first chapter ends. The kingdom of Ravence was carved from unforgiving sand and ruled by a bloodline that commands the Eternal Fire, but Elena, the heir to the throne, is the one Ravence who cannot wield the family flame.

Verma braids court politics, a looming coronation, and an assassin with a buried secret into a story about a young woman desperate to prove she deserves a crown. The setting blends fantasy with light science-fiction touches, so the desert holds both fire priests and hoverpods, which gives the book a texture unlike anything else on this shelf.

It hits the same beats Suri fans crave: a heroine straining against a dynasty, faith bound up with power, and the weight of a prophecy nobody fully trusts. Recommended for readers who want a fresh voice and a burning desert throne.

Nina Varela's Crier's War is the sapphic slow-burn Jasmine Throne readers will fall into for the exact same reason they loved Priya and Malini: two young women on opposite sides of a power divide, circling each other with longing and suspicion. In a world where the Automae, an engineered ruling class, have subjugated humans, Ayla is a human servant who has sworn to kill Lady Crier, the daughter of the sovereign who destroyed her family.

Crier, meanwhile, was designed to be perfect and is beginning to suspect she is something more. Varela writes the yearning across a class-and-power gulf that gives this shelf its charge, and the rebellion simmering underneath keeps the stakes high.

The prose leans lush and romantic rather than grand and bloody. Recommended for readers who came to The Jasmine Throne mostly for the enemies-drawn-together sapphic tension and want a whole book built around it.

Kemi Ashing-Giwa's The Splinter in the Sky moves the empire-versus-colonized-people story Jasmine Throne readers love into a science-fiction frame without losing an ounce of the political heat. Enitan is a tea-making scholar from a province occupied by the Holy Vaalbaran Empire, and when her sibling vanishes and her ex-lover, the local governor, cannot help, she is swept to the empire's floating capital as a political prisoner and reluctant spy.

Ashing-Giwa keeps the focus on court maneuvering, quiet resistance, and a heroine who fights with words and patience rather than a sword. The sapphic thread and the anti-colonial spine map cleanly onto what makes Suri's trilogy sing, only relocated to an enormous structure in the sky.

Written when the author was in her early twenties, it reads as an assured debut. Recommended for readers open to a space-set take on the rebellion-inside-the-palace story.