Bookdriftopen the map →

Books like To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

Christopher Paolini · 2020 · US · science fiction
Book 1 of 2 in Fractalverse
★ 3.80 Goodreads · 74,047 ratings

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.

Explore books like this on the map

12 books for readers of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

Shards of Earth

Adrian Tchaikovsky · 2021 · UK 98% match ★ 4.04 Hardcover · 493 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Final Architecture
shares: first contact, space opera, found family · 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.

Pandora's Star

Peter F. Hamilton · 2004 · UK 98% match ★ 4.22 Goodreads · 55,272 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Commonwealth Saga
shares: first contact, space opera, epic · speculative, deep world-building

In 2380 humanity has spread across hundreds of worlds linked by wormholes, and when an astronomer sees two distant stars vanish inside a barrier, a starship is sent to find out why, with consequences no one foresaw.

The Mote in God's Eye

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle · 1974 · US 98% match ★ 4.07 Goodreads · 74,157 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Moties
shares: first contact, space opera, epic · earnest, speculative

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.

Leviathan Wakes

James S. A. Corey · 2011 · US 96% match ★ 4.31 Goodreads · 341,085 ratings
Book 1 of 9 in The Expanse
shares: body horror, space opera · speculative, easy read

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.

The Dreaming Void

Peter F. Hamilton · 2007 · UK 96% match ★ 4.18 Goodreads · 30,308 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Void Trilogy
shares: space opera, epic · 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.

Red Rising

Pierce Brown · 2014 · US 96% match ★ 4.27 Goodreads · 1,005,632 ratings
Book 1 of 6 in Red Rising
shares: space opera, war · speculative, fast-paced

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

A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine · 2019 · US 96% match ★ 4.10 Goodreads · 78,166 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Teixcalaan
shares: space opera · 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.

Empire of Silence

Christopher Ruocchio · 2018 · US 95% match ★ 3.92 Goodreads · 69,957 ratings
Book 1 of 6 in Sun Eater
shares: space opera, epic, sprawling · earnest, speculative

Hadrian Marlowe, heir to a minor lord of the Sollan Empire, runs from a future as a torturer for the Chantry, is stranded penniless on a distant world and drawn towards the empire's war with the alien Cielcin, in a story he tells long after history has condemned him.

Heir to the Empire

Timothy Zahn · 1991 · US 95% match ★ 4.06 Hardcover · 609 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Thrawn Trilogy
shares: space opera, epic, war · earnest, speculative

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.

Dauntless

Jack Campbell · 2006 · US 95% match ★ 3.97 Goodreads · 34,660 ratings
Book 1 of 6 in The Lost Fleet
shares: space opera, action heavy, war · earnest, speculative

Captain John 'Black Jack' Geary, frozen in a survival pod for a hundred years and revered as a legend, is woken to take command of a trapped fleet deep in enemy space.

A Fire Upon the Deep

Vernor Vinge · 1992 · US 94% match ★ 4.13 Goodreads · 68,845 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in Zones of Thought
shares: space opera, epic · speculative, deep world-building

When a research team awakens an ancient evil at the edge of the galaxy, two children escape to a medieval world ruled by the Tines, doglike aliens who think in packs, and a rescue mission races across a galaxy where the laws of physics change with distance from the core.

On Basilisk Station

David Weber · 1993 · US 94% match ★ 4.14 Goodreads · 49,602 ratings
shares: space opera, action heavy, war · earnest, speculative

Commander Honor Harrington, given a refitted light cruiser and a humiliating posting to the backwater Basilisk system, starts doing the job properly and stumbles on a plot by the Republic of Haven.