this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
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[โ€“] white_nrdy@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Got any sci-fi / fantasy books you wanna recommend? Love Andy Weir and Fantasy.

Personally in terms of fantasy, first ones I think of are Mistborn. Love that trilogy. Been meaning to read the rest (or at least more of) The Cosmere.

Currently reading the second novel in The Expanse series.

[โ€“] toynbee@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Recently I've been intermittently bedridden and needed a lot of content to consume. I read much of the works of Edward Ashton, author of Mickey 7, inspiration for the movie Mickey 17 (and presumably also the username of a prolific lemmy user). I enjoyed that book and its sequel; additionally I very much enjoyed another book by the author, Mal Goes to War.

Because of some similar themes, I was recommended the book series Undying Mercenaries by B.V. Larson. I wouldn't say I recommend them; honestly, I think they're pretty poorly written, but the universe building is pretty solid and the character development surprised me in a good way. The humor is juvenile but fun. Also there are 24 of them so far, so they passed the time pretty well. All of the books in this paragraph are decidedly sci-fi.

Along those lines, I also enjoyed Expeditionary Force. It's about a common soldier who surprisingly finds a tool that shapes humanity in an expanding universe of aliens. I never actually finished that series (I was listening to it while driving back and forth from work, which was interrupted by COVID, then I forgot where I was in the series and never picked it back up.)

The Red Rising series is, or was, pretty great. It's about a lowly caste - starting on Mars - overthrowing society. Again, I only got three books in but never got past that. This wasn't a fault of the series - I had a kid and changed jobs around then and didn't have time to read as much.

I have previously read books by Mark Lawrence and enjoyed them a great deal, though they're not without flaws. As such, I picked up the more recent Library series, which was pretty good, though not my usual fare. However, I was able to share enjoyment of it with my wife, which isn't true of most of what either of us read. That series is very fantasy. In fact, everything I've read by that author is.

You mentioned Mistborn so you're familiar with Brandon Sanderson. I don't really like that story much myself - or didn't when I tried it a long time ago, anyway - but I did enjoy two series of his: The Reckoners, a story about superheroes; and the Cytoverse, a story about ... Well, a lot of things, but it starts with starfighters and gets more complicated. I would call both of those stories pretty sci-fi.

Bobiverse is in my top three book series. It's about a guy who dies but then manages to essentially become an AI and take advantage of that status to do a lot of big, good things.

The Last Kingdom is in my top five for sure. It's written by an actual qualified historian about a major transitionary period for England (with some artistic licenses taken regarding the history, but from what I understand every book is at least based on something that really happened). This one also has a Netflix series associated, though I don't know how good that is.

Finally, I have to assume you're familiar, but just in case: Douglas Addams and Terry Pratchett, both unfortunately passed, have plenty of excellent works even beyond their more well known stuff.

Hope some of the above provides you with entertainment! I wrote each section as I remembered the relevant series, so I apologize if my tone was a bit meandering.