The Fantasy Review’s list of 6 Space Opera Books with Brilliant World-Building.
Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) by Kim Stanley Robinson
From the blurb:
For centuries, the barren, desolate landscape of the red planet has beckoned to humankind. Now a group of one hundred colonists begins a mission whose ultimate goal is to transform Mars into a more Earthlike planet. They will place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light onto its surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels drilled into the mantle will create stupendous vents of hot gases. But despite these ambitious goals, there are some who would fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.
Heavenbreaker by Sara Wolf
From the blurb:
The duke of the powerful House Hauteclare is the first to die. With my dagger in his back.
He didn’t see it coming. Didn’t anticipate the bastard daughter who was supposed to die with her mother―on his order. He should have left us with the rest of the Station’s starving, commoner rubbish.
Now there’s nothing left. Just icy-white rage and a need to make House Hauteclare pay. Every damn one of them…
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (Fractalverse, #1) by Christopher Paolini
From the blurb:
During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.
As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human…
Deathstalker (Deathstalker, #1) by Simon R. Green
From the blurb:
Owen Deathstalker, last of the infamous warrior Clan, always considered himself more of a writer than a fighter, preferring his history books to making any actual history with a sword. But books won’t protect him from Her Imperial Majesty Lionstone XIV, who just Outlawed and condemned Owen to death, without any explanation, reason, or warning. No wonder she’s called the Iron Bitch…
On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington, #1) by David Weber
From the blurb:
INTRODUCING HONOR HARRINGTON
Having made him look a fool, she’s been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her.
Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship’s humilating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station.
The indigenous people of the system’s only habiltable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens…
The Engines of God (The Academy, #1) by Jack McDevitt
From the blurb:
In the late 2100s, archaeologists journey into outer space to seek the secret meaning of fourteen mysterious statues that had been found among the stars, uncovering ruins and following clues to the builders’ identity to the farthest boundaries of the galaxy.
