Postby Zohar » Sun Sep 30, 2018 2:13 pm UTC
Most of what I read is sci fi and fantasy, so I'll give recs in those areas. I would also recommend you try to actively find writers of color (which you've begun to do with Octavia Butler and if you haven't read Wild Seed I highly endorse doing so).
N K Jemisin really came into prominence a couple of years ago with Fifth Season. It's not her first novel, but it has great world building, and fascinating character work. I believe there's two sequels now, and other series as well.
Nnedi Okorafor has been writing for a while, too, mostly for young adults. I started off with her novella Binti which is a strange, creepy, and somewhat hopeful story of (sort of) first contact. There's follow-up books as well.
Robin Hobb writes amazingly intricate worlds with amazing character development in a medieval-ish fantasy setting. George R R Martin has described her as part of the inspiration for Game of Thrones. She has a vast universe with multiple trilogies spanning recurring characters, the first book in that series is The Assassin's Apprentice. I usually need an emotional break between reading each of her books.
Diana Wynn Jones writes a lot of young-adult fantasy, her most famous book is probably Howl's Moving Castle, which is charming and lovely and very different from the movie, so I recommend it even if you've seen it and didn't like it too much (for example because the ending makes no sense).
Lois McMaster Bujold writes both space opera as well as classic fantasy. In the fantasy genre, I loved The Curse of Chalion. In science fiction, she has a fairly long series called The Vorkosigan Saga and you should probably start with Shards of Honor.
Becky Chambers is a fairly new writer, only recently published her third space-opera novel. The first of which is The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. It's an in-depth dive into a universe of her creation. The first book is a bit like a collection of short stories, the second book has a more coherent plot. Both are lovely queer creations with themes of found families.
Malinda Lo's first book, Ash, is a reimagining of Cinderella that I highly recommend. The second one, Huntress, is in the same world but hundreds of years apart, still describing a fantastic world of dark faeries and their interactions with humans.
I only read one of Naomi Novik's book, Uprooted. It's a fantasy romance story set in an Eastern-European inspired world of evil woods and the creatures lurking within.
I hope these help!
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