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.