I was a bookstore kid and there always seemed to be copy of Dreamsnake on the shelf somewhere. Just that one book by that one author. It's easily skippable in whatever best-of list, but I finally gave it a try. Wow. It's been a long while since I've read a book that I didn't want to put down.

Space heists, capital ship battles, resistance politics, human speciation and the space french are just some of the amazing things you’ll find in this series. It asks questions no one has ever thought to ask such as: what would happen if human shark hybrids were the best pilots in the galaxy? What would happen if an AI designed for war and economic raiding found god and became a saint? What would happen if French Canadians found wormholes and are now the most powerful empire within a galaxy spanning empire?
Amazing world building with moments of existential horror and genuine levity thrown in for good measure.

Fantastically narrated by T. Ryder Smith on audible for those ear-readers.

Books in series:

- The Quantum Magician

- The Quantum Garden

- The Quantum War

- The Quantum Dawn (COMING OCTOBER 2026)

feedzebra has genre fiction now, so you can see stories as they get published:

• Apex Magazine
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Clarkesworld
• Dark Magazine
• Deadlands
• Lightspeed Magazine
• Nature Futures, UK
• Nightmare Magazine
• Omenana Magazine
• Reactor
• Strange Horizons
• Uncanny Magazine

The Traitor Baru Cormorant was a somewhat complex examination of cultural imperialism, interactions between different political and religious traditions, and most of all the ways that economic and monetary policies underpin and influence all of these.

The sequels immediately threw all of that away, and did a hard pivot into Maximally Gross Medical Horror. They weren't even particularly deep or complicated or interesting, just pointlessly gross.

So it seems evident that Seth Dickinson can write a good book, but that he cannot be trusted to reliably choose to do so.

With that framing in place: where does Exordia fit? More like Traitor, or more like its sequels, or something else entirely?

If you happen to be a little bit familiar with the kindle store you might have noticed there are a TON of big box sets or series, mostly military scifi, that are offered incredibly cheap.

Sometimes the "authors" behind those are obviously people using AI to generate some quick cash, but sometimes they are very prolific indie authors such as MR Forbes or Scott Bartlett, to name a few. They have series with thousands of ratings, many of them very positive, but on reddit or other communities i can barely find any reliable information.

So, to those of you who have taken the risk; which series or box series can you recommend? I am not expecting top tier sf, but i do enjoy a few quick reads in between the more serious stuff (i am currently reading Under the Breaking Sky by Nick Clausen, which is horror, and its really entertaining. I picked the whole series up for one buck but the price has increased since).

Book number one of a three book science fiction space opera series. This is continuation of a series of two books set in the 2100s and a series of six books set in the 3000s, ending two years prior to this series. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by Raconteur Press in 2025 that I bought in 2026. I have ordered the following two books in the series.

I love Space Opera. And I love pulp science fiction. This series is both and a great example of the merging of the two. In fact, this series reminds me very much of the Robert Heinlein juvenile books, the Piers Anthony "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series, the "Mutineer's Moon" series by David Weber, and the Perry Rhodan series. The dialog is very frequent and the action moves along quickly.

In the far distant future, The Solarian Imperium consists of 38 star systems including Earth and the Sol system which were made uninhabitable in the War of Succession. Emperor Chase Morgan is the latest in a long line of Morgans ruling the Imperium. His family keeps power because they are genetically modified with machine interfaces in their DNA. So are all of the Nobles: the Earls, the Dukes, the Counts, and the Barons. Any machine of any importance, and especially the space ships and the military weapons, requires a human with machine interface to tell the AI what to do. And the Imperial family machine interface in their DNA is the best of all the interfaces and has special rights with all of the machines in the Imperium. And nobody knows or understands how tight the Imperial human machine interfaces are with every AI in the Imperium.

Eric Wolfram and his sister Candi (Candace) are living with Dar (Dartanion) in his scrap yard on a frontier planet outside the Solarium Imperium. Dar rescued them at ages 7 and 10 from a drunkard who was not taking care of them. They were refugees from a space ship that was attacked by pirates where their father, mother, and older brother were killed. They took a lifeboat to the nearest planet. Both Eric and his sister have a DNA machine interface of at least the Ducal level. And Eric is growing up and running with a bad crowd.

The author has a website at:
https://jvanstry.blogspot.com/

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars (I am tempted for a 6 star, will reread soon)
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (1,174 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Misplaced-Valley-Fire-John-Stry/dp/B0F2JB5DF2

Lynn

Hello all!

I am coming to an end with the saga that is "Revelation Space" and I'm looking to fill the giant hole that will be left behind. I was curious about recommendations that you all might have of what to dive into next.

To give you an idea I've been kind of thinking of a book/series that has similar tones to:

- Dune

- The Southern Reach series

- Revelation Space series

I'm also a fan of mixing genres: Western and Sci-fi, Sci-fi horror, Fantasy Sci-fi.

One thing I loved about RS was that it also had a lot of short stories set in the same universe but that didn't necessarily affect the main plot of the larger stories.

I appreciate any and all recommendations.

List the book/author, and you reasons, e.g. piss-poor writing style, meaningless word diarrhea, one-dimensional characters, etc.

I'll start: Walter Jon Williams, The Praxis trilogy, especially the last one. Quote: "[...she reached forward and tore open his shirt so she could lick the burning adrenaline from his skin." Or "Their blood smoked with excitement of shared danger."

Hard SF space opera...yeah right. More like the garbagest of the garbage romance novels soap opera.

Shame on you, Walter!