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.

I don't think any has mentioned this yet, The Expeditionary Force series?

You could try Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan. It's the first book in the trilogy. The book was better then the Netflix series.

Starship Trooper

Have you read revelation space? I also recommend house of suns from the same author. They fit your criteria

Stephen Donaldson's Gap series. Fair warning though, the first (short) book is very confronting.

Not super long, but Consider Phlebas is pretty action packed. Two agents on opposing sides of a war trying to secure the same thing

I wouldn't say it is "packed with action" but I have to recommend the Revelation Spaces series by Alastair Reynolds, just because I think more people should be reading these.

The Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson. It's a huge favorite across our family.

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.

I also really like the Honor Harrington series. I’m also a big fan of the Liaden universe created by Lee and Miller.

The Nanotech Succession by Linda Nagata is pretty awesome if less well-known.

I've actually really been enjoying the Warhammer 40k books, started with the Ultramarines omnibus, fun sci Fi fantasy

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.

Spinward Fringe series is good and decently long

This is kind of cheese ball, but have you tried Steve Perry's Matador series? The books aren't very long, but there's quite a few of them. Lots of fun characters and villains and such and it's a light, fun read.

Peter F Hamilton

• Greg Mandel trilogy
• Confederation universe
• Void Trilogy
• The Chronicle of the Fallers

And more that I haven't read now I look him up