Hopefully someone here can suggest some SciFi books/series for a picky teenager! His favorite book is Project Hail Mary (has read all Weir) and he also enjoyed Murderbot series (good pacing and number of characters), The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Ghost Station, Earthburst Saga (books 1-5), and Contagion (Bowman). He is interested in a book that takes place in space, preference for fewer characters, a strong focus on the main character, especially one where you learn more about the character as you read the book, and medium to fast pacing.
Suggestions of mine he hasn't liked: Expanse series, Children of Time, any Asimov or Stephen King, Pastwatch, any YA novel with a heavy romance aspect (Red Rising and Cinder)
by Lamalaju
4 Comments
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
Try the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. They don’t have to be read in order, and a couple of the early ones are sort of romance focussed.
Give him The Warrior’s Apprentice to see.
Star Wars, The High Republic series especially
Alan Dean Foster’s Flinx books may appeal to him. The series starts with For Love of Mother-Not. It takes place on a planet (not Earth), but the rest of the series is in space.
MMC is a teen/young man with a poisonous, flying, empathetic snake companion. The whole series is a quest to figure out who his parents are and why he has psi abilities. His identity and past take many, many books to unfold.
Romance comes and goes in the series and isn’t a constant focus.
As is typical, I like some books in the series more than others.
If he likes them, Foster wrote several books in the Humanx universe.
He may also like:
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers. This one blew my mind. It’s a novella.
The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey. Not in space, but it has the gradual unfolding of the MC’s identity. Sci fi and horror.
The Bobiverse by Dennis Taylor. May have too many characters, but it’s funny and in space.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. A classic. There’s a long series involving space travel that follows.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. Not space but loved by my teenage son (along with the Bobiverse)