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Books like Judas Unchained

Peter F. Hamilton · 2005 · UK · science fiction
Book 2 of 2 in Commonwealth Saga
★ 4.30 Goodreads · 41,505 ratings

Humanity's war against the alien Primes reaches its climax as a desperate fleet makes a last stand across interstellar space.

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12 books for readers of Judas Unchained

The Dreaming Void

Peter F. Hamilton · 2007 · UK 98% match ★ 4.18 Goodreads · 30,308 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Void Trilogy
shares: far future, space opera, technological · speculative, deep world-building

In the far future, a man begins dreaming of a perfect world inside the Void at the centre of the galaxy, and when millions decide to follow him there, the galaxy's powers fear that the pilgrimage will trigger the Void's expansion and destroy them all.

Consider Phlebas

Iain M. Banks · 1987 · UK 98% match ★ 3.84 Goodreads · 104,662 ratings
Book 1 of 10 in Culture
shares: far future, space opera, epic, war · action-packed, speculative

A shapeshifting mercenary fighting for the Idirans in their holy war against the Culture hunts a fugitive AI Mind across a galaxy tearing itself apart.

Leviathan Wakes

James S. A. Corey · 2011 · US 97% match ★ 4.31 Goodreads · 341,085 ratings
Book 1 of 9 in The Expanse
shares: space opera, conspiracy, propulsive · speculative, action-packed

A hardboiled detective on an asteroid-belt ice hauler stumbles into a conspiracy that connects a missing woman to a weapon that could reshape humanity.

Red Rising

Pierce Brown · 2014 · US 97% match ★ 4.27 Goodreads · 1,005,632 ratings
Book 1 of 6 in Red Rising
shares: space opera, propulsive, war · action-packed, speculative

On a colonised Mars, a miner discovers the brutal caste system's darkest secret and is recruited for a revolution from the inside.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

Christopher Paolini · 2020 · US 97% match ★ 3.80 Goodreads · 74,047 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Fractalverse
shares: space opera, epic, war · speculative, deep world-building

On a survey mission to an uncolonised moon, xenobiologist Kira Navárez finds an alien relic that bonds itself to her, and the discovery drags her into first contact and a war that spreads across the stars.

Downbelow Station

C. J. Cherryh · 1981 · US 96% match ★ 3.90 Goodreads · 16,812 ratings
shares: space opera, ensemble, war · speculative, deep world-building

As the Company Wars end, Pell Station, orbiting a world inhabited by gentle natives, is swamped with refugees and caught between the Earth Company's fleet and the rising Union.

Shards of Earth

Adrian Tchaikovsky · 2021 · UK 96% match ★ 4.04 Hardcover · 493 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Final Architecture
shares: space opera, epic, ensemble · speculative, deep world-building

Fifty years after the alien Architects stopped reshaping inhabited worlds and vanished, Idris Telemmier, an Intermediary engineered to fight them and now crewing a salvage ship, finds signs that they are back.

The Mote in God's Eye

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle · 1974 · US 96% match ★ 4.07 Goodreads · 74,157 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Moties
shares: space opera, epic, ensemble · speculative, deep world-building

In 3017, a thousand years after humanity spread to the stars, a probe arrives from the Mote, a star nobody has ever visited, and the Second Empire of Man sends the battlecruiser MacArthur to meet whoever sent it.

Heir to the Empire

Timothy Zahn · 1991 · US 96% match ★ 4.06 Hardcover · 609 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Thrawn Trilogy
shares: space opera, epic, propulsive · speculative, deep world-building

Five years after the fall of the Empire, as Leia and Han await twins and Luke Skywalker trains alone as a Jedi, Grand Admiral Thrawn, a brilliant strategist from the Unknown Regions, takes command of what is left of the Imperial fleet.

House of Suns

Alastair Reynolds · 2008 · UK 95% match ★ 4.24 Goodreads · 34,792 ratings
shares: far future, space opera, epic · speculative, deep world-building

Six million years from now the Gentian Line, a thousand clones of one woman, criss-cross the galaxy and meet every two hundred thousand years to share their memories. Campion and Purslane, two of them who have fallen in love against the Line's rules, are running late for the reunion.

Saga, Volume One

Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples · 2012 · US 95% match
shares: space opera, epic, war · speculative, deep world-building

Alana and Marko, soldiers from two worlds that have been at war for as long as anyone remembers, have a baby together and go on the run, hunted by both sides, while their daughter Hazel narrates from the future.

A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine · 2019 · US 95% match ★ 4.10 Goodreads · 78,166 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Teixcalaan
shares: far future, space opera, technological · speculative, deep world-building

A young ambassador from a small colony arrives at the heart of a vast empire, where memory is currency and identity is a political weapon.