The Fifth Season

by R. F. Kuang

Like Jemisin, Kuang builds a world where magic is both a weapon of mass destruction and deeply tied to systemic oppression—but she grounds it in Asian history rather than creating something entirely new. The way she uses shamanism and warfare as parallel systems of power will feel familiar to how you experienced the orogenes' role in The Fifth Season, except here the protagonist is complicit in her own exploitation in ways that are even more morally complicated.

by Giambattista Piranesi

This is my surprise pick for you—it's literary fantasy rather than epic, and much shorter than what you just read, but Clarke does something Jemisin also does brilliantly: she withholds information about how her world actually works, and the slow realization of what's really happening hits with the same gut-punch force as the revelations in The Fifth Season. The mystery of identity and reality unfolds through observation and memory rather than exposition.

by Joe Abercrombie

Abercrombie shares Jemisin's refusal to give readers clear heroes and villains, but he approaches it through gritty realism and dark humor rather than cosmic horror. His multiple POV structure lets you see how the same events look completely different depending on who's experiencing them—that same disorientation you felt watching Essun's story unfold will hit differently here, through cynicism instead of tragedy.

by George MacDonald

This one's from 2014, so it's contemporary with The Fifth Season, but it approaches power structures from the opposite angle—instead of watching someone trapped by a system, you watch someone trying to navigate and reform one from within. Addison builds her world through court intrigue and kindness rather than catastrophe, but she's equally meticulous about how institutions actually function and how hard it is to change them.