I’m looking for popular books recommendations?? Mainly Fantasy, Sci-Fi, possibly romance and litfic??

I’m mainly into fantasy/sci-fi, especially epic fantasy and literary sci-fi: here are my recs!

**Popular:**

Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive lives up to the hype. It’s an epic fantasy that’s *not* just a Tolkien copycat (although I do enjoy those from time to time), with a completely original hard magic system and a TON of fascinating, intricate, interwoven politics and really really compelling action scenes. The books are huge, but I could not put them down. The premise is… a little hard to summarize without spoilers.

The Expanse by SA Corey is a sci-fi series that’s part action movie, part political intrigue, and all excellent physics. These are also huge, but each book is a complete storyline, and I also could not put these down. The setting is an Earth in 100-150 years, where interplanetary travel is common but interstellar travel is not. Earth is unified, but Mars and the asteroid belt/outer planets are independent entities, and all three are in a tense balance of power when something alien arrives.

The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin sort of straddles the fantasy/sci-fi line (and has horror!), and while the magic/science system is absolutely fascinating, the story is mostly about society, family, oppression, and power. It’s set in a world where there is only one extremely large continent (Pangaea style), which is constantly on the verge of apocalyptic natural disasters called Seasons. These disasters can only be controlled by orogenes, people with seismic earth-based powers, who are functionally enslaved. At least, that’s the status quo, until someone rips open the earth and splits the continent in two, causing a potentially centuries-long apocalypse that threatens to wipe out human live altogether.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is a book I can tell you almost nothing about without spoiling it. A man wakes up on a spaceship, traveling somewhere far beyond our solar system, and has to figure out where he is and why he’s there. It has all of the excellent science of the Martian, but with so much more heart.

**Niche but absolutely excellent:**

A Memory Called Empire and sequel A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine is my favorite literary sci-fi ever. It’s about a sprawling military empire called Teixcalaan (inspired by Aztec and Byzantine culture), and tiny Lsel station just beyond its border trying to maintain its cultural identity. A Teixcalaanli ship shows up at Lsel requesting a new ambassador as the last one has died, with no explanation, and an intricate web of politics follows. It’s also about cultural exchange and cultural imperialism, memory, and the inheritance of knowledge and culture.

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez is a literary epic fantasy told through a stage play told through a folk tale. Your grandmother (“you” are a character in the story, not you the reader) tells you a story from the old country, about two warriors who must transport a god safely across a nation in the midst of turmoil. It’s also about power and consequences for those who have it, the cycle of violence in families and in society, the power of choice, and empire. This is maybe my favorite book ever.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty is a historical fantasy set on the Indian Ocean in the 1100s. A retired pirate queen is pulled out of retirement to track down a kidnapped child, but she ends up retrieving her old crew to fight a supernatural threat. It is *extensively* researched, and besides being an excellent pirate adventure, it’s also a rich and immersive window into Muslim mythology and the Antiquity period in the Islamic world!

The Fisherman by John Langan

Awesome horror story. It’s a story within a story. Deals with themes of loss and grief mixed with cosmic horror. Very well known and loved by horror literature lovers, but not mainstream popular.