The Fantasy Review’s list of 8 Space Opera Books with Mysteries That Will Keep You Guessing Until the End.
Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1) by Dan Simmons
From the blurb:
On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all…
Summertide (Heritage Universe, #1) by Charles Sheffield
From the blurb:
It was just before Summertide, the time when the twin planets, Opal and Quake, would orbit closest to their sun, subjecting both — but Quake in particular — to vast tidal forces. And it was to be the most violent Summertide ever, due to the Grand Conjunction of the system’s stars and planets, something that happened only every 350,000 years.Access to the unstable Quake was supposed to be prohibited, but some very insistent travelers were determined to make the trip…
The Star King (Demon Princes, #1) by Jack Vance
From the blurb:
Five intergalactic criminal masterminds raid the tranquil world of Mount Pleasant, leaving behind only ruin and slaughter – and the orphaned child Kirth Gersen, who comes to manhood swearing to take bloody revenge. Now Gersen roams the galaxy, bringing vengeance to the Demon Princes one by one, in Jack Vance’s classic series of hardboiled space opera…
The Prefect / Aurora Rising (Prefect Dreyfus Emergency, #1) by Alastair Reynolds
From the blurb:
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds.
His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that leaves nine hundred people dead. But his investigation uncovers something far more serious than mass slaughter — a covert plot by an enigmatic entity who seeks nothing less than total control of the Glitter Band…
A Talent for War (Alex Benedict, #1) by Jack McDevitt
From the blurb:
Everyone knows the legend of Christopher Sim. An interstellar hero with a rare talent for war, he changed mankind’s history forever when he forged a rag-tag group of misfits into the weapon that broke the alien Ashiyyur.
But now, in a forgotten file, Alex Benedict has found a startling piece of information. If it is true, then Christopher Sim was a fraud…
Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1) by James S.A. Corey
From the blurb:
Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach.
Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why…
Consider Phlebas (Culture, #1) by Iain M. Banks
From the blurb:
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender…
A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1) by Arkady Martine
From the blurb:
Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn’t an accident―or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court…
