Books Like Tamsyn Muir — 8 Reads for Locked Tomb Fans
Tamsyn Muir writes necromantic space fantasy narrated by a sword lesbian with a chip on her shoulder, in a series that becomes increasingly strange and devastatingly emotional across four volumes. Finding books that share Muir's exact combination of literary ambition, bone-dry wit, queer centrality, and willingness to break your heart is nearly impossible — the combination is hers alone. But the eight books below share at least one crucial quality: the literary intelligence, or the queer sensibility, or the emotional cost of found family in circumstances designed to destroy it.
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A Memory Called Empire
by Arkady Martine
An ambassador carries the neural backup of her dead predecessor into a vast galactic empire — navigating court politics while solving a murder. Martine is the author most often recommended alongside Muir: both write with the same literary precision, the same queer sensibility, and the same interest in consciousness and identity as the architecture of a story.
Space OperaPolitical IntrigueIdentityQueer Romance🔥 Heat: Warm - 2
She Who Became the Sun
by Shelley Parker-Chan
A peasant girl takes her dead brother's destiny in fourteenth-century China and becomes something monstrous and magnificent. Parker-Chan writes gender and power with the same moral rigour Muir brings to the Locked Tomb, and the historical setting has the same immersive depth.
Historical FantasyGender IdentityMorally GreyAmbition🔥 Heat: Warm - 3
All Systems Red
by Martha Wells
A part-human, part-robot security unit who has hacked its governor module just wants to watch TV dramas — and must protect a team of scientists it has grown fond of. Wells' Murderbot shares Muir's combination of devastating emotional depth and a narrator whose self-deprecating voice is in constant tension with how much they actually feel.
Found FamilyDry HumorSci-FiReluctant Hero🌸 Heat: Sweet - 4
The Traitor Baru Cormorant
by Seth Dickinson
An imperial accountant uses economics as a weapon to destroy the empire that colonized her homeland from within. Dickinson shares Muir's willingness to make readers care about a protagonist and then make the protagonist's choices cost more than expected. The queer romance and the political complexity are both central to the story.
Political IntrigueEmpireQueer RomanceMoral Cost🔥 Heat: Warm - 5
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
by Becky Chambers
A crew of tunnel-builders travels across the galaxy — and the found family aboard is the entire point. Chambers and Muir both center queer characters as a matter of course and both build found families that feel genuinely earned. Chambers is warmer and more optimistic; start here if you want Muir's emotional depth without the devastation.
Found FamilySpace OperaQueer CharactersEnsemble Cast🌸 Heat: Sweet - 6
Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke
A man lives in a house with infinite halls and almost no memory of how he came to be there. Clarke's puzzle-box novel shares Muir's gift for building a world with rules that the reader discovers alongside the protagonist, and the emotional payoff of the mystery is in the same register as Gideon's revelations.
Puzzle MysteryMagical WorldMemoryLiterary Fantasy🌸 Heat: Sweet - 7
The Goblin Emperor
by Katherine Addison
A gentle half-goblin emperor refuses to become the system he now leads. Addison writes fantasy of decency with the same warmth and character focus Muir brings to her found-family dynamics, and the court politics have similar complexity. The antidote to Muir's intensity rather than a match for it — recommended for recovery reading between Locked Tomb volumes.
Reluctant RulerCourt PoliticsFound FamilyKindness🌸 Heat: Sweet - 8
The Priory of the Orange Tree
by Samantha Shannon
A sweeping epic with dragons, courts, and a world-ending threat — including a queer love story that anchors the entire narrative. Shannon's scope and ambition sit in the same register as Muir's, and the queer representation is central rather than incidental in the same way.
DragonsQueer RomanceEpic FantasyMultiple POV🔥 Heat: Warm