You may also like Will Wight's Cradle series. It's an american style of Xianxia/Cultivation novels but very good. The audiobooks are also highly praised.

You may also enjoy the Expeditionary Force series. Totally different story, but it has a similar vibe.

I was so skeptical when my recommended the series. It sounds so juvenile and low brow but is actually SO GOOD. Both funny and genuinely well written and structured. Love that it's doing as well as it is

And the prequel A Deepness in the Sky is even better with very alien aliens (and a neat way of hiding that alien-ness from readers) and some very nasty antagonists with truly terrifying technology in the form of "focus".

Mind you, Vinge's Rainbows End is also really good and set in the near future with what may be an emerging AGI as a key character.

I really like that, but I definitely thought A Deepness in the Sky was even better despite probably being considered "classic space opera".

> A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

It's a great book, but everyone has heard of it already.

I'm only on the second volume, but so far I wouldn't call it Sci-Fi; it's pretty much straight-up fantasy (specifically a portal-fantasy with string LitRPG elements) so far.

I suppose there could be a "It's all a VR game" or "It's alien mind control" twist that I haven't gotten to yet.

I love the Wandering Inn but calling it “a bit longish” is quite an understatement.

I learned about TWI and pirate aba some months ago, and binge-read the whole series non-stop.

Was about to say so many of these "you've never heard of" lists are books within the past decade but there are just so many older ones. Asimov alone wrote many book outside of the robot and foundation series.

One that only the older set may know is Cities in Flight by James Blish (technically a trilogy but primarily sold as the single combined novel).

Interstellar Pig, was an unexpected addition there. I remembered that book immediately from hearing the title!

(On that note I remember a book I read at a similar time, some kids took off in a hollow asteroid, for reasons, and there was a home-made aiming system for their weapon(s) which involved using a cat. I've no idea what it was called or who wrote it. But I guess similar young-adult fiction.)

>Vita Nostra, Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

That's far from their best novel, but unfortunately most aren't translated into English - there're Polish and sometimes Deutsch translations only :(

> You get a cool page like this -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/f/bwb

How do I get to my page? The profile section is very spartan. I'm not even sure whether my profile picture was submitted.

Yes!!! I would also recommend anything by Zenna Henderson.

Just because someone liked a book you hate, doesn't mean you will hate the other books they like.

I hated "Sea of Tranquility". I can't stand stupid characters.

"Furtuna" was so bad I made a note to avoid any other books by Kristyn Merbeth. The main character is stupid, selfish, and short sighted to the detriment of everyone around her.

True. I hated the three body problem in fact but I loved the expanse (yes both franchises I know from TV). But I read all the expanse books. I gave up on the three body problem halfway the second book, I just found the story too boring and hardball.

Not saying the books are bad but preferences differ indeed.

That's a poor way to find good books?

I liked 3BP, and I also liked Permutation City and Cryptonomicon. Yet I met a lot of people who didn't like 3BP, but liked the latter ones.

Ya I am working on this :)

Our new Book DNA review format has you pick why you disliked/loved/liked a book and I am going to use that data to help build a profile of similar types of readers.

You can try it here by sharing your 3 fav books of 2024 -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/my-3-fav-reads

Next year I will roll it out for all books as we get more in place.

I think it depends on why someone disliked a book.

I liked the first novel in the Three Body Problem series, but mostly because it exposed me to a culture I wasn't really familiar with; there was a lot about China I didn't know, and it was interesting to read about characters who lived and breathed that history.

But the rest of the novel, and the sequels, mostly to me felt like re-treading ground that I'd already walked in other novels, which did a better job of exploring those ideas.

(To be more specific, because I'm sure folks will ask - I think Stephen Baxter does a better job of building interesting, mostly-consistent-to-my-eye universe-wide physics puzzles, although nearly all of his books are depressing as hell. The closest thing to a happy ending in most of his novels is "it's not a complete genocide!")

I wonder how much "well written" is a matter of taste (I thought it wasn't that much). I found "We Are Legion" very poorly written although I loved the premise and really wanted to read it but couldn't go any further then maybe a quarter of it. It also happened to me with Murakami's Kafka On The Shore but I blame that on the translation or some cultural impedance mismatch.

I listened to this series as an audiobook and I enjoyed it a lot. I prefer reading to listening but this one worked really well and has a great narrator. It's a good series too, simple fun with decent jokes and a well paced plot.

This is one of my all-time favorite series. I laugh so much reading them, and the later books go heavy into really interesting alien species. Authors love them as well: https://shepherd.com/search/book/38814

Have you read any Peter Hamilton? He is another fav of mine.