Pile by the Bed reviews Ion Curtain by Anya Ow – enjoyable first entry in a new Australian space opera series.

Pile by the Bed reviews Stars and Bones, the start of a new space opera series by Gareth L Powell (The Continuance #1)

Pile by the Bed reviews Azura Ghost by Essa Hansen, (The Graven #2) the action packed space opera sequel to Nophek Gloss

Pile by the Bed reviews Leviathan Falls by James SA Corey – the ninth and final book in The Expanse series. Recommended.

Pile by the Bed reviews The Second Rebel, second book in Linden Lewis’ space opera First Sister trilogy which ups the stakes and develops to some great cliffhangers

Pile by the Bed reviews Artifact Space by Miles Cameron – the first of a space opera meets military/ mercantile science fiction series full of engaging characters and anchored by an intriguing mystery.

Pile by the Bed reviews and recommends Chaos Gate the final book in Megan O’Keefe’s space opera Protectorate series.

Pile by the Bed reviews and recommends A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine (Texicalaan #2) – a worthy sequel to her 2020 Hugo Award Winning debut A Memory Called Empire.

Pile by the Bed reviews Nophek Gloss (Graven #1), the debut space opera by Essae Hansen featuring a super soldier and a found family of misfits.

Pile by the Bed reviews and recommends The Worst of All Possible Worlds, the last book in Alex White’s propulsive Salvagers trilogy.

Pile by the Bed reviews Chaos Vector by Megan O’Keefe (The Protectorate #2) – intricate, action filled space opera peopled by flawed characters and centred around an arse-kicking, wise criacking heroine.

Pile by the Bed reviews The Last Emperox (Interdependency #3) by John Scalzi – the latest volume in an enjoyable, sometimes pointed space opera series.

Pile by the Bed reviews A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine – a strong modern space opera debut.

The final book of Corey J White’s Voidwitch trilogy (which started with Killing Gravity)  opens in the same vein as the previous two – with an action sequence as protagonist and voidwitch Mariam ‘Mars’ Wu pursues someone through the crowded hallways of a space station. She is trying to find a cure for Pale, the boy who had been turned into a living weapon and who she rescued at the end of the previous book – Void Black Shadow. Once again, before too long her enemies are at the door and she has to dip into her prodigious power set (this is a woman who managed to pull a moon out of the sky in a previous volume) to escape. Static Ruin follows many of the same plot beats as the earlier two books – Mariam searches for something, find bits of the puzzle, then the bad guys arrive and she has to flee, usually leaving behind a large amount of carnage. In this book her quest is to find her father and creator both as a last hope for curing Pale but also to understand her own origins. It allows White to briefly consider issues of family, loyalty and…

It has been over 65 years since Asimov published the first of his Foundation series in which a group of scientists come up with a plan to save a dying galactic federation. While the Foundation trilogy is seminal science fiction, many readers these days find it a bit of a slog. John Scalzi’s Interdepency series takes a similar premise but has given it a modern spin in the vein of contemporaries like James SA Corey, Ann Leckie and Yoon Ha Lee but with his own brand of verve and wit. The Consuming Fire picks up not long after the end of The Collapsing Empire. The flow lanes, which connect the planets of the Interdependency and are necessary for their survival, are shutting down and the route to the one planet that might sustain survivors is blocked. While the first book concerned itself with the discovery of the impending end of everything and for that reason sometimes felt like a lengthy prologue, this book gets down into the consequences of knowing that the Empire is under threat and exploring how people respond to that knowledge. The book opens with the emperox, Grayland II, announcing that she has had visions of the…

Christopher Ruocchio’s debut novel and first of a new series owes a debt to the space opera classics. The opening of Empire of Silence feels cribbed from the opening of Frank Herbert’s all time classic Dune. A galaxy-wide human empire ruled by aristocratic houses, a young man chafing against his place and struggling to find his destiny, a powerful and sinister religious order, computer technology outlawed and replaced by human “computers”. But it also has echoes of other space operas from that age and earlier in which humanity has spread to the stars but in doing so has retained its classical roots.  The society Ruocchio presents is a pastiche of high tech, Roman and medieval.  Empire of Silence picks up the pace a little when narrator Hadrian Marlowe goes on the run from the privilege of his family but is dumped on a backwater planet where he has to live by his wits. This middle section of the book morphs into a retelling of Gladiator as Hadrian gets work as cannon-fodder in the local colosseum and manages to train a rag tag group to survive. The book then switches again to become an exploration of ancient mysteries and finally attains some forward momentum when Hadrian encounters humanity’s enemy – the Ceiclin who ravage through human space.  Empire of Silence is the first volume of a memoir. Hadrian narrates from an old age in which he has done some horrific things that are only…

Yoon Ha Lee wraps up his stunning Machineries of Empire trilogy with all of the style of the first two volumes. Both the eye-opening Ninefox Gambit and its satisfying sequel Raven Stratagem were shortlisted for the Hugo Award (Lee’s debut was shortlisted for pretty much every award going). And it will be no surprise if Revenant Gun joins them. The third book of the trilogy takes the universe and characters that Lee created in these earlier books and once again twists them into new shapes. Being a mathematician, Lee seems to be constantly finding new answers to the same equation. At the end of Raven Stratagem the status quo of Lee’s universe has been seriously upended. The calendar-based system which powered the universe has been overthrown, many of its architects (the hexarchs) are dead and chaos is threatening to flow in their wake. Revenant Gun jumps forward nine years from that point – the former empire is split in two, and an ancient enemy is rising, keen to see the status quo re-established and for the universe go back to the way it was. Saying too much more about the plot would invite more spoilers. Suffice to say that Lee…

Imagine a space opera stripped back to its barest essentials and you have the debut Killing Gravity from Australian author Corey J White. Everything is here – kick ass main character, possibly loveable side characters, a moustache twirling villain, space battles, future tech, a mystery to be solved, strange new planets – but in a condensed almost novella form that has the action zipping past. Given this is the first in a potential series, this is possibly more space overture than space opera.

John Scalzi kicks off his new space opera series with a mutiny, gun running and the potential of space pirates. There is also plenty of exposition about hyperspace lanes known as the Flow but delivered with such verve that it is a joy to read. The mix of high concept science fiction and a slightly tongue in cheek tone should come as no surprise from the author who gave us both the Old Man’s War series and the award winning Redshirts. Scalzi is not backwards in building his universe from some fairly common tropes – there is an empire ruled by an emperox who is also head of the church and the most powerful trading guild, there are noble families, mainly also connected with trading guilds, and arcane trade relationships. The empire itself, known as the Interdependency is a bunch of planets that can only exist by relying on trade with each other facilitated by the mysterious and not well understood Flow lanes. But the Flow is breaking down, potentially isolating and condemning to failure, all of the interdependent outposts of the Empire. So that even before his scenario is fully understood, Scalzi has started to tear it all apart…

Six books into a projected nine book series and you would expect Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham aka James SA Corey to slow down just a little. And coming off a massive solar system shaking event in last year’s Nemesis Games (reviewed here), this is what they do. Babylon’s Ashes, for all of its action set pieces feels like a consolidation and table setting for the projected final three volumes of this epic space opera series. That does not mean they have throttled back on the action but there is only a little of the weird alien goings on or massive events that have characterised earlier volumes. Rather the focus is on the shifting allegiances, politics, battles and fixes required to manage both a war and a crisis on an unprecedented scale. The book opens on an Earth completely devastated by the Belter Free Navy in Nemesis Games. Millions have died and millions continue to die as pawns in a political struggle between the combined forces of Earth and Mars and the Free Navy, armed by Martian military dissidents. In the middle of it all, as always, are James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante. While Holden, Naomi, Alex…