I love Neal Asher's books, found him a long time ago in one of those "year's best" collections of short stories from the library (though the ones with fantasy and horror were always the best, I think I read every single collection for every year and found so many good writers that way.)
They are full of action, good characters and worlds and ideas, sweeping and huge settings. Feels almost more like watching a movie to read them.
My favorites are distributed around, and I tend to read in publish order so I have to power through some of the slower ones. They’re insanely good, though.
Publishing order is best with any series, barring Discworld. Authors learn more about their series as they write them, and going out of order as a reader sometimes gives you answers to mysteries before you were ever introduced to a mystery.
Both full Discworld readthroughs were publish order lol. The last go round included Shepherds Crown.
And discworld has so much going on it prolly only matters for individual series. I have a cat named Eskarina and I’m sure a lot of readers barely remember her.
Discworld is the one exception for me because early Pratchett is much weaker, and he bashes one of my OTHER favorite authors which makes me frowny. And he has coherant sub-series with their own little casts of characters and it’s easy to jump in with those. (I started with Guards! Guards! and the Night Watch and went forward/backwards from there.)
Everything else though I read publish order, though.
To me many of the culture books start really slow/on the boring side but then they pick up and get really good. I really like how they often describe the culture not directly but through interaction with others.
For me, the favorite of the genre to date are the Mass Effect games, Star Wars (the good ones, at least), Asimov's Foundation books, Stanislav Lem's Solaris book and, even if it's more grimdark than space opera, Warhammer 40k. I still have to delve into The Expanse but I don't have the time yet
The Ender series splits and has a series of books from Ender’s pov and the other from Bean’s. Both are great and imo the series that follows Bean was a little more engaging.
Yup. The Bean books are more like, in character, the first Ender book. While the “original” sequels get into some slower more philosophical/religious things. Some of that is good, some weird, some dull.
Some of my all time favorites are the Spinward Fringe series by Randolph Lalonde, The Intrepid Saga from the Aeon 14 universe, and the Imperial Radch Trilogy from Ann Leckie.
A Memory Called Empire was really good, but it wasn't a space battle shoot-em-up, more like large scale political intrigue and murder mystery.
@Izzy brought up Tchaikovsky's Final Achitecture and @ScrumblesPAbernathy mentioned Children of Time series, loved those. Right now I'm on the second of his Bioforms books, Bear Head. After that it's back to Idris and The Lords of Uncreation.
While it probably doesn't qualify as space opera, I have to throw in The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I just fucking love Murderbot and ART.
There's always the Bobiverse, The Culture Series, and The Cluster Saga, too.
For shows, Battlestar Galactica is always great. I just started watching Caprica and loving it so far. It might not be an “opera”, but it does so much to fill out the Battlestar Galactica universe.
I also just started reading The Expanse series and would definitely recommend it, even for someone like me who’s not an avid reader.
The Vorkosigan Saga by Bujold is considered to be some of the best space opera in the entire genre, definitely recommend giving it a try. Start with Warriors Apprentice if Shards of Honor isn’t to your liking.
I jived best with Warrior's Apprentice, but my friend, who reads more romance (I generally don't read it), liked Shards of Honor just fine.
The series as a whole is top-tier sci-fi, but Shards of Honor is definitely a romance in SFF trappings, and one of Bujold's earlier books (which, to me, shows, as she's still honing her chops).
The Quantum Magician and The Final Architecture are great space operas in my opinion. They both have really large stakes, a large number of factions and species with varying politics and exciting space combat. They are both incredibly different though.
Have you read Children of Time? It's also Tchaikovsky, it doesn't really get space-opera-y until the third book, Children of Memory but it's soooooo good. Soooooo good.
Children of Ruin feels like it's just going to be a rehash at the beginning. Stick with it, though. It takes a drastic departure into horror and asks some really interesting questions.
Space Opera has got to be my favorite genre, but it feels like we have so precious few that actually nail it. Mass Effect, and Star Wars are ones that instantly come to mind, Starship Troopers is an excellent piece that also falls into the same vein.
There’s a close relationship, or at least some significant overlap/intersection between military SF and space opera.
Weber’s Honor Harrington series would be considered both. Likewise, Tanya Huff’s Confederation novels are unabashedly military SF, but within a decidedly space opera overall frame that is progressively revealed through the course of the series.
Some space opera series, like Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga cross back and forth across diverse sub genres - some military SF in some, political space opera in others along with some social and genetic engineering here and romance there.
CJ Cherryh’s Alliance-Union Universe isn’t primarily military SF, but it’s in the mix.
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