I started this book series that begins with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. It’s a space sci-fi series and the author did a great job with creating different societies and species and thinking about things like different methods of speech and communication, mobility, how do multi-species societies work, etc. But she did a good job of focusing less on the world building with a focus on how the characters navigate the world and situations they’re in.
One of the author’s parents worked for NASA as an astrophysicist or something, the other was a biologist, and she’s a huge DnD nerd, so that all seems to check out haha.