I feel like I wrote this post from time to time on Reddit and I think I’ll start this tradition here. I’m. a Honor Harrington fan. I’ve read several other space operas and they always fall short. The three that came close were Lt. Leary, Kris Longknife and Vorkosigan saga. Lt. Leary was nice, but it failed on World building. Kris Longknife also failed on world building and had astronomical levels of cringe with aliens and plot, but I enjoyed it. Vorkosigan saga had better world building and it was nice overall, but the books without Miles Vorkosigan weren’t enjoyable. There were other series that I enjoyed: Serrano Legacy, Vatta’s War (those are some of my favorites but they were too short), Starship’s mage (it declines with every new book), The Lost Fleet (it has a serious plot problem, the plot doesn’t move forward), Old Man’s War (it was really nice), Dread Empire Fall (also awesome), Teixcalaan (good, but short), Alarm of War (good, but short and pretty generic), Bobbiverse (I read until book 3, it isn’t for me), Red Rising 1st trilogy (really nice, but too Hunger Gamish, this whole dividing society into a cast system is getting old), Ark Royal. The Three Body Problem was awesome and, contrary to most series, didn’t leave me craving more after it was over. Edit: forgot to mention The Expanse, it was OK.
I think that what won me over on HH was the fact that she is a complete Mary Sue and other character don’t fall far from the tree, there is a nice world building, characters die, and there is a ton of action.
On the other hand, there are some long books that I enjoy that aren’t space operas. I really enjoy the Dresden Files (because he is cool and it is a long series), I absolutely love Jack Reacher (it is just a nice fun read, it’s like a nice Big Mac), I also enjoy The Spellmonger series, and I enjoyed the Riyria. I disliked Takeshi Kovacs (lack of sequence and plot) and I absolutely hate Southern Reach (VanderMeer), and there is another popular sci-fi book that is written as a report, which I also hated. I don’t like those very innovative mystery stories where you are trying to figure out wtf is going on or waiting for a plot to start until the middle of the book.
Got any suggestions? =)
(OMG, after writing this post, I see myself as an incredible hard reader to please)
The Three Body problem is a an absolutely phenomenal take on the Dark Forest Theory.
It has the unfortunate quality of reading like a news article at times, recounting events, rather than feeling like an illustrated narrative. And some plot points hinge on the authors pre-conceived notions about gender that really didn’t sit well with me.
Love that series but it’s not really Space Opera
No love for Iain M Banks? The Culture series looks like it will tick all your boxes and instead of following a single protagonist the Culture itself is the protagonist so each book has it’s own cast of interesting characters.
I second this. The Culture cycle is one of the best space opera series ever written.
I really enjoyed the Culture setting but had to give up after Look to Windward because that was about 3 books in a row with unsatisfying endings.
+1 - Banks is probably my favorite sci fi author (as you might have guessed based on my username). The Culture series is excellent and highly entertaining.
I also really like the Honor Harrington series. I’m also a big fan of the Liaden universe created by Lee and Miller.
What? No love for the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey? I love em. Gotta love genetically engineered dragons.
Stephen Donaldson’s Gap series. Fair warning though, the first (short) book is very confronting.
Thankyou DoisBigo, I didn’t know other people liked Kris Longknife and Honor Harrington. I pickup random space operas from charity stores – which if their shelves are any metric then it seems my entire country wants to read nothing but stories about ordinary people on earth; good stuff is few and far between.
Hal Spacejock is good. I found the second book first, it was a hoot (opening: robot on the spaceship panics after making a mistake, wipes its own memory so nothing can be proven, the ship then starts failing and the robot assumes the captain must be at fault for poor maintenance). Some surreal space-opera travel scenes across planets towards the end mixed in with lots of humour.
“Revelation Space” by Alastair Reynolds was definitely interesting. At times a bit stretched out, but it had some cool concepts in it (like safely arresting your fall down an elevator shaft by reversing the thrust of an entire spaceship). Scale was insane (crazy time & space) but then it all focuses on a few smaller points, which felt a bit too distilled for what felt like a big universe moments before. Characters were 50/50 and I didn’t enjoy some of their arcs, but the others were good.
A few months back I finished “Crystal Healer” (the dodgiest book title ever if you didn’t know it was a space opera) by S.L. Viehl. I remember almost nothing from it, except a hot cat-woman that was enslaved to the main character. No mental staying power whatsoever, but I think I enjoyed reading it.
I recently found a book on my shelf “War Games” by Brian Stableford. I thought I hadn’t read this. I opened the first page and found:
2013-02-25 I want to crush this novel. Why? … because the author did not write a sequel.
No idea what it’s about :D
Thankyou everyone in this topic for suggestions. If you want any of the books I mention then just poke me, it’s better I send them to someone else rather than let them sit on my shelf forever. I’m in Australia.
The Spinward Fringe series by Randolph Lalonde is very good. The first book is free too, so that’s a plus 👍
Many good recommendations already. Mine are: Warhammer, namely the Horus Heresy, the first few books of which I’ve read. Only 51 more to go. Robert Heinlein, all of his books are in the same universe which is pretty neat. He has his issues but the world building is top notch and sustained across so many works.
John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series was a long and pretty interesting read.
Premise starts out as a “humanity vs the stars” kind of story, but instead of sending young people to their deaths, the futuristic human society instead recruits old people who have already lived full lives. You can enlist towards the end of your natural life to transfer your mind to a (photo)synthetic purpose-built humanoid super soldier body. If you survive a period of time (5 years?), you earn another shot at life and can elect to become a colonist for far away worlds. Most don’t get that far.
Your usual “long-term relationship tensions,” “humans are always bad guys,” “what will technology think of next?” tropes apply.
Even if you don’t think you’re into Warhammer 40k you should check out the books. There’s 100’s of them and are actually very good. I put them off for a long time because i thought they’d just be battle porn. They are well written with compelling narratives, great characters, a sprawling galaxy full of different aliens and factions, and of course the aforementioned war porn.
If you are hesitant like i was, i recommend starting with the first three books in the Horrus Heresy. There’s like 40 something of them but the first three you could read and put down satisfied without continuing if you wanted.
I always list the three books out for people because there’s so many it’s easy to get lost looking for them.
Horrus Rising, False Gods, Galaxy in Flames
As for a non-opera book, I highly recommend Seven Eves. I don’t think i saw it in your post. But you had a long list so forgive me if i missed it. It’s one book, pretty long though and one of my GOATS.
I started reading the Gaunt’s Ghosts series of books (I found a recommendation on some 40K subreddit a few years back). Some of them are really interesting with politics and (fantasy) tactics. Others are artificially bleak and evil, which lead me to stop. At one point it felt like the author had started retconning a minor character to be some crazy evil murderer, almost as if the publisher went “needs more bleak”, and it really boiled my gills. I didn’t feel like this character did anything other than cause random unhappiness and excuses to kill off characters; at no point did it tie into the plot or serve any proper purpose.
Oh and these books are stupidly expensive to get even second hand. I’ve also never succeeded at finding any in charity shops. For some honest and innocent reason my copies seem to have very bad OCR, but you get used to it.
I second this. I’ve never played or painted, but I’m fascinated by the universe, and it is LONG. I’m just now finishing the prequel series (the Horus Heresy) which is over 50 books long (and some extra short stories). The main universe has 500 or something books.
I listen to audiobooks on the way to work, and used to do the same on the way to school, so I go through books very quickly.
Dan Simmons - Hyperian
KCantos. Four books in the series, well worth a read imo… I loved itAdrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time / Children of Ruin / Children of Memory (not read the third but am sure it’ll be as good as the first two)
100% Hyperion Cantos
No idea why my brain had me put a K instead of a C. I haven’t played Mortal Kombat in a while so can’t even blame it on that
I want to know if OP has read AT and what they think. I love all his books (just finishing Lords of Uncreation) and so could use OP’s list for things to go to next :)
Ooh, another operatic that comes to mind: 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
MOAR: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Not too long ago I did a deep dive for non white male authors (as much as I love Asimov and Iain Banks) and it was really rewarding. Ann leckie, Kameron Hurley, Becky Chambers, Nnedi Okorafor, Lindsay Buroker, to name some, are all good for a spaceship. Strongly suggest NK Jemesin’s Broken Earth, which isn’t spaceships, but still great. It’s been a bit, but I remember enjoying Samuel Delaney’s Nova, as well.
The Helliconia trilogy might be worth looking into. It’s pretty unique in the genre… It’s not deeply political though if that’s what you’re looking for. The main character is essentially the planet itself and how the global society of people living on that planet changes over centuries. The seasons on the planet last hundreds of years too so it’s adds some interesting evolutionary survival ideas in there.
Definite recommend for Helliconia. One of the few book series that has epic level story structure but digs into the every day lives of different species and how they communicate their culture through time.
Off the top of my head, here’s a few:
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The Commonwealth Saga, by Peter F Hamilton
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Hyperion Cantos
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The Spiral Wars
Hyperion Cantos is weird but I couldn’t put it down. Would recommend.
+1 for Commonwealth. Space trains.
Another +1 to commonwealth, just all around.
Hamilton is a model railroader IRL which I suspect had something to do with his lavish descriptions of those space trains.
For real, space trains are the tits.
“Stargate, but what if trains and capitalism”
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I really like Neal Asher’s books. Sprawling long series (what is the plural of series?) and so good.
Was recommended the Children of Time books, am halfway through the first and WOW. I love it.
Plural of series is series, if that helps.
Children of time was amazing. What a unique, interesting concept. The following books were good too but for me didn’t live up to the first one. Which is okay, i still liked all of them.
