The Cipher
A troubled couple discovers a mysterious black hole in an apartment building storage room and becomes obsessed with what it changes.
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Similar in plot structure
These books are ranked using the plot structure labels extracted for The City Inside.
Plot structure labels used: slow burn, episodic, loosely plotted, info-dense, open ending, abrupt ending, unresolved threads, character-driven, idea-driven
Focused on “descent into madness” where exact label matches exist.
This does not mean the books share the same plot, setting, quality, or difficulty. It means their plot structure embeddings are close.
Chapterhouse: Dune
The Bene Gesserit fight for survival as a brutal new enemy closes in and they reshape Chapterhouse into a new desert world.
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Teckla
A crime-boss assassin must protect his wife when her secret revolutionary activism threatens their marriage and his world.
Starfish
Bioengineered outcasts maintain a deep-sea power station where isolation, trauma, and something far older begin to collide.
The Voices of a Distant Star
A short sci-fi romance about two teens whose love is tested by interstellar distance, war, and time delay.
World Made by Hand
After collapse and fuel loss, an upstate New York town struggles to rebuild order, food supply, and community.
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The Centre
A London-based Pakistani translator joins a secret language school promising fluency in 10 days—and discovers a sinister cost.
Dawn
A lone human survivor wakes aboard an alien ship and must help rebuild Earth under coercive, unsettling conditions.
Retro
A struggling actress lands a luxe time-travel job, but escaping into the past starts warping her present life.
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Mastodon
After his father vanishes in a banned mountain zone, a determined teen hikes into the woods and finds a hidden nightmare.
Awakened
A newly Awakened queer Brooklynite joins a coven of trans witches to confront a malicious AI and find belonging.
Doctor Who: The Clockwise Man
In 1920s London, the Doctor and Rose unravel a murder mystery tied to clockwork killers, masks, and a missing TARDIS.