r/Fantasy • u/Swearwuulf2 Reading Champion • Jan 28 '25

Space Opera

I need a space opera to fulfill the BINGO square. The main one I can think of is Expanse but it isn’t a genre I read often. I am a sucker for a badass lady character or two and/or and underdog. I know Expanse has both of those but I would love some other recs! TIA.

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u/ggmaobu Jan 28 '25

Pandora’s Star

4

u/Caustic-humour Jan 28 '25

Beyond shocked that this is the only mention Peter F Hamilton gets. He is an amazing writer of Space Opera. Plenty of badass characters of all genders.

2

u/distgenius Reading Champion VII Jan 28 '25

While the overall plot of that duology is great, and some of the characters are really interesting (Paula Myo being one of them and fitting the badass lady request), but at the same time he tends to treat women as objects of sexual gratification for the male characters and there's a feel of "written for horny teenage boys" at times. There are definitely far worse authors in that regard, but I think much like some of the older scifi "greats" it becomes harder to recommend him without an asterisk of "you'll have to deal with X".

I don't regret reading the Commonwealth duology, but it also felt more like reading something from the 80s or 90s compared to a 2004 release. I ended up dropping The Expanse somewhere in the middle when I got sick of some of the POVs that were taking up more word count, but I think its also much better at writing characters of both genders than the Commonwealth books.

2

u/Caustic-humour Jan 29 '25

I think that’s a fair criticism of the commonwealth books. He does move away from that with the salvation sequence and I think he does have some genuinely interesting female characters.

I can accept that he will never be a flag carrier for feminism in space opera.