Non-military space opera recomendations (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by yaroto98@lemmy.world to c/books@lemmy.ml

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I'm looking for some good space opera. I read a lot on royal road and KU. I love space opera, but I'm sick of military and AI tropes. Any good suggestions? The more ship to ship battles the better. I understand that may be counter-intuitive, but I've read several privateer/freighter/scrapper books that were amazing. Looking for more of the same.

Thanks!

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[-] artifex@piefed.social 11 points 1 month ago

Can't go wrong with some Culture books from Iain M Banks - Consider Phlebas , Excession and Hydrogen Sonata (and probably others I'm forgetting) definitely have some big space battles without the overhead of military tropes.

[-] davel@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 month ago

IIRC, Excession is a novel about AI spaceships thwarting an existential threat involving tens of thousands of warships. It’s a great read, but arguably about AI & military, though Banks doesn’t rely on common tropes.

[-] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 month ago

Came here to recommend that, but then realized that AIs often play major roles in this books...
So while definitely one of the greatest space opera books series, it does not quite fit OPs preference.

[-] yaroto98@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Thanks for the warning!

this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025

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