What to read after “Throne of the Crescent Moon” by Saladin Ahmed: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Loulie al-Nazari, the Midnight Merchant, trades in jinn relics with her jinn bodyguard Qadir. When the sultan forces her into a search for a lost lamp, she must cross a desert of jinn, thieves and old stories, where the line between merchant and prey keeps shifting.
Zafira is the Hunter, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to enter the cursed Arz and bring food to her starving people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, sent by his father to kill her. Both are drawn into a desert quest for an artifact that could restore magic, and neither expects what they find.
Amani Al'Hiza lives in Dustwalk, a dead-end desert town, and hides two things: she can shoot like a legend, and she is half djinn. Refusing a blackmail marriage and a future in Dustwalk, she disguises herself and joins a stranger heading into the desert, where a rebellion is gathering.
John Carter, a former Confederate soldier, wakes on Mars and finds a dying world of red deserts, warring tribes and thin air. Taken in by the green Martians, he learns their customs and their languages, and sets out to protect Dejah Thoris, a princess of the red Martians.
Shasta has grown up poor in Calormen and dreams of escape. When he meets a talking horse who longs for Narnia, the two flee north together, joined by a runaway noble girl and her horse. Their road lies across a burning desert, with pursuers close behind and a secret about Shasta's past waiting at the end.
Clay Cooper left his days as a mercenary behind for a quiet life. Then an old bandmate arrives to say his daughter is trapped in a besieged city, and Clay must round up the ageing, out-of-shape heroes of Saga for one more job.
Daphne Pembroke needs help to free her kidnapped brother, so she hires Rupert Carsington, a strong, reckless nobleman with more charm than sense. Their search for him and a stolen papyrus takes them up the Nile, where tomb robbers, the desert and their growing feelings prove equally dangerous.
Gen has been locked in the king's prison of Sounis for boasting that he can steal anything. Freed by the king's magus, he is dragged along on a hunt for an ancient artifact that could settle the fate of three nations, and he schemes, complains and remembers more than he admits.
Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, follows the man in black across a vast, dying desert. His pursuit leads him through ruined towns and old memories, and forces him to weigh his obsession with the Dark Tower against the life of a boy he meets on the road.
Each dawn the young caliph marries a bride, and each dawn she is dead. When Shahrzad volunteers to marry him, she survives the first night by telling stories and begins to look for the truth behind his cruelty.
Kell is one of the last Antari, magicians who can travel between four parallel Londons: Red, Grey, White and the lost Black. After a smuggling exchange goes wrong, he flees into Grey London and meets Lila Bard, a thief who talks her way into his journey. Together they must keep a dangerous object from falling into the wrong hands.
A security android that has quietly hacked its own governor module would rather watch soap operas than protect the survey team it is assigned to. When the planet turns hostile, it must choose between staying hidden and risking everything for the humans in its care.
Linked stories follow human expeditions to Mars, from the first landing to later settlements, where the abandoned cities of an older civilisation still hold traces of its people. Against the red desert and the empty seas, the settlers bring their own dreams and failings, while Earth moves toward war.
Tress lives on an island where the seas are made of deadly spores. When the man she loves is taken by the Sorceress, she leaves her ordinary life, gathers an unlikely crew and sails toward the midnight sea to bring him home.
In a city of canals and thieves, Locke Lamora leads a small band of con artists who rob the nobility. A hidden power turns the tables, and the crew find themselves caught in a scheme far larger than any of their own.
Eli Monpress is a wizard and a thief who would rather have a larger bounty than a heavier purse. To raise it he kidnaps a king, which brings the Spirit Court's envoy Miranda Lyonette after him. Eli's easy charm hides a plan that puts more than his own bounty at stake.
In a bombed Italian villa at the end of the Second World War, a nurse tends a badly burned patient who can no longer remember his name. As the others in the house circle him, fragments of his past as a desert explorer and his affair with a married woman resurface.
After a catastrophic injury leaves him paralyzed, former combat medic Joe transfers his consciousness permanently into a new full-immersion game. There he chooses the ritualist class, a secretive path most players ignore, and studies obscure lore, follows hidden quests and bends the game's rules in pursuit of real power.
On the desert planet Arrakis, young Paul Atreides survives the destruction of his family and is taken in by the Fremen. As he learns their ways and the spice trade that powers an empire, he becomes the centre of a prophecy, a rebellion and a war for control of the known universe.
Kinch Na Shannack owes his guild of thieves more than he can ever pay. To settle the debt he tags along with a scarred knight on a journey to find women taken by goblins, through a world of old wars, hungry gods and creatures that would happily eat a thief.
Nahri has survived in eighteenth-century Cairo by faking healings and stealing what she can. A careless summoning calls a djinn warrior to her side and drags her to Daevabad, a city of magic and old feuds, where her true blood makes her a threat to everyone around her.
Eelyn is a warrior of the Aska clan, raised to fight the rival Riki in a war older than anyone remembers. Captured and forced to live among her enemies, she begins to see them as people, and finds herself drawn to a young man she was always taught to kill.
Rae Seddon, a baker called Sunshine, is captured by vampires at her family's lake cabin and learns she carries magic of her own. Bound to a vampire who should be her enemy, she is pulled into a war among the Others, the supernatural beings living beside humans.
Port and Kit Moresby travel from New York to North Africa with their friend Tunner, hoping the trip will mend their marriage. As they move deeper into the Sahara, the heat, illness and emptiness of the landscape strip away the habits that held them together, and each of them drifts toward a different kind of loss.
What should I read after “Throne of the Crescent Moon”?
Start with “The Stardust Thief”, “We Hunt the Flame”, “Rebel of the Sands”: they are the closest to “Throne of the Crescent Moon” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Throne of the Crescent Moon” these are Desert World, Quest, Found Family), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “The Stardust Thief”, “We Hunt the Flame”, “Rebel of the Sands”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
