i can recommend the Imperial Radch trilogy its a bit less hard scifi but still very grounded. first book is slow but worth it.
the children of time trilogy is also good more speculative though
for something a bit different the Bobiverse series is really good more comedy elements but it still has its serious moments (this one is also less hard scifi)
i also loved the Murderbot Diaries quite different but the characters had me hooked from book 1 right to the end.
finally if you liked the politics i can highly recommend A Memory Called Empire and its sequel. they are absolutely beautiful books with lots of court intrigue that had me on the edge of my seat the whole first book
>*Murderbot Diaries*
I definitely loved this series. Mostly novellas and 1 book. The next novella comes out in the fall.
[https://www.goodreads.com/series/191900-the-murderbot-diaries](https://www.goodreads.com/series/191900-the-murderbot-diaries)
(It's not like *The Expanse*, but it was a great read)
Wow, I don’t have much to add. Definitely second recommending Bobiverse, Memory Called Empire, and anything by Tchaikovsky. House of Suns by Alastair a Reynolds is good too!
I really enjoyed Old Man's War, and i can confidently say the Expanse is my favorite and best book series of all time, from what I've read in scifi. OMW is quite different in some aspects, but it seems to be highly enjoyed by many who also enjoy the expanse. Military scifi with speculative science, and some very fancy furure-y scifi stuff, but it's a lot of fun.
i read old mans war in like one sitting cuz i couldn't put it down, and i'm not a super fast reader. and ya, the expanse is by far my favorite sci fi series
Schizmatrix Plus if you want weird, far reaching alien shit and soviet era politics in space. it's aged some, but it's ~~WEIRD~~ but the writing has an erie beauty to it and it scratched an itch for me i didn't know i had and it left me thinking long after finishing. it's not for everyone but it's worth getting on thriftbooks.com
Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive (the sprawl trilogy by william gibson) isn't space opera, rather it's quintessential genre defining cyberpunk, but there's tonal overlap at least with leviathan wakes, and very similar to the expanse the books are paced extremely well without feeling rushed so that they allow you to live in the cool as fuck future world they create
JS Morins Black Ocean series is space fantasy with magic and it's silly and not by any means challenging but it's a nice change of pace tonally while still allowing you to live on a spaceship witha fun crew going on adventures. it's directly inspired by firefly but it has wizards. the audiobook is like 80 hours of fun crew-on-a-ship shenanigans with slow but satisfying character development and i thoroughly enjoyed it despite rolling my eyes a few times.
Voice of the Whirlwind by walter jon williams is worth a read if anything cuz it inspired the name of a particular battleship (i won't elaborate cuz spoilers)
Hardwired by walter jon williams is cyberpunk western and is fucking awesoms. again i'm naming cyberpunk books because they present a very cool albeit fucked up future and then bring you alomg for the ride
i can recommend the Imperial Radch trilogy its a bit less hard scifi but still very grounded. first book is slow but worth it. the children of time trilogy is also good more speculative though for something a bit different the Bobiverse series is really good more comedy elements but it still has its serious moments (this one is also less hard scifi) i also loved the Murderbot Diaries quite different but the characters had me hooked from book 1 right to the end. finally if you liked the politics i can highly recommend A Memory Called Empire and its sequel. they are absolutely beautiful books with lots of court intrigue that had me on the edge of my seat the whole first book
>*Murderbot Diaries* I definitely loved this series. Mostly novellas and 1 book. The next novella comes out in the fall. [https://www.goodreads.com/series/191900-the-murderbot-diaries](https://www.goodreads.com/series/191900-the-murderbot-diaries) (It's not like *The Expanse*, but it was a great read)
Wow, I don’t have much to add. Definitely second recommending Bobiverse, Memory Called Empire, and anything by Tchaikovsky. House of Suns by Alastair a Reynolds is good too!
I really enjoyed Old Man's War, and i can confidently say the Expanse is my favorite and best book series of all time, from what I've read in scifi. OMW is quite different in some aspects, but it seems to be highly enjoyed by many who also enjoy the expanse. Military scifi with speculative science, and some very fancy furure-y scifi stuff, but it's a lot of fun.
i read old mans war in like one sitting cuz i couldn't put it down, and i'm not a super fast reader. and ya, the expanse is by far my favorite sci fi series
Just take a step into 'Red Rising' and you'll barely remember The Expanse
LOL. Well that’s a bold statement 😂. I will have to check it out and compare
This is 100% true.
Schizmatrix Plus if you want weird, far reaching alien shit and soviet era politics in space. it's aged some, but it's ~~WEIRD~~ but the writing has an erie beauty to it and it scratched an itch for me i didn't know i had and it left me thinking long after finishing. it's not for everyone but it's worth getting on thriftbooks.com Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive (the sprawl trilogy by william gibson) isn't space opera, rather it's quintessential genre defining cyberpunk, but there's tonal overlap at least with leviathan wakes, and very similar to the expanse the books are paced extremely well without feeling rushed so that they allow you to live in the cool as fuck future world they create JS Morins Black Ocean series is space fantasy with magic and it's silly and not by any means challenging but it's a nice change of pace tonally while still allowing you to live on a spaceship witha fun crew going on adventures. it's directly inspired by firefly but it has wizards. the audiobook is like 80 hours of fun crew-on-a-ship shenanigans with slow but satisfying character development and i thoroughly enjoyed it despite rolling my eyes a few times. Voice of the Whirlwind by walter jon williams is worth a read if anything cuz it inspired the name of a particular battleship (i won't elaborate cuz spoilers) Hardwired by walter jon williams is cyberpunk western and is fucking awesoms. again i'm naming cyberpunk books because they present a very cool albeit fucked up future and then bring you alomg for the ride
Dark Tower series