Science Fiction

No love for Iain M Banks? The Culture series looks like it will tick all your boxes and instead of following a single protagonist the Culture itself is the protagonist so each book has it's own cast of interesting characters.

Two obvious suggestions are Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series, and Issac Asimov’s “Foundation” series.

Both are sci-fi classics (Dune is still the best selling sci-fi book of all time I believe) and are space operas of a massive scope.

They are also some of my personal favorites.

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. I liked the prequel, A Deepness in the Sky even more.

If you like Star Wars (original trilogy, that is), I'd recommend Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn. I can also recommend his Conquerer's trilogy and Cobra series.

I liked The Lost Fleet, personally. The space battles are excellent, and they're quick reads. Agreed about the plot, though, it takes a while. Worth it overall IMO.

You might consider the Iron Druid series, too. It's written in a lighter tone than the Dresden Files, but it's got a similar vibe.

You might check out Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison, too. It's another urban fantasy with an interesting world premise. I struggle a little to recommend it -- I lost interest fairly quickly, but if you don't mind some romance in your urban fantasy, you might like it more than I did. And if you do like it, it's a long series, over a dozen books!

I really like Neal Asher's books. Sprawling long series (what is the plural of series?) and so good.

Was recommended the Children of Time books, am halfway through the first and WOW. I love it.

Dan Simmons - Hyperian ~~K~~Cantos. Four books in the series, well worth a read imo... I loved it

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time / Children of Ruin / Children of Memory (not read the third but am sure it'll be as good as the first two)

It's not one of the Culture novels, but The Algebraist by Iain Banks is one of my favorite one book cover to cover operas.

Pandora’s Star and the sequel Judas Unchained by Peter F Hamilton

Reality Dysfunction, Hyperion, Red Rising, Dune, The Expanse, Foundation, The Mote in God's Eye

Even if you don't think you're into Warhammer 40k you should check out the books. There's 100's of them and are actually very good. I put them off for a long time because i thought they'd just be battle porn. They are well written with compelling narratives, great characters, a sprawling galaxy full of different aliens and factions, and of course the aforementioned war porn.

If you are hesitant like i was, i recommend starting with the first three books in the Horrus Heresy. There's like 40 something of them but the first three you could read and put down satisfied without continuing if you wanted.

I always list the three books out for people because there's so many it's easy to get lost looking for them.

Horrus Rising, False Gods, Galaxy in Flames

As for a non-opera book, I highly recommend Seven Eves. I don't think i saw it in your post. But you had a long list so forgive me if i missed it. It's one book, pretty long though and one of my GOATS.

Alastair Reynolds - Revelation space i.e. Inhibitor sequence

Peter F Hamilton - Void trilogy in the Commonwealth universe

John Scalzi's Old Man's War series was a long and pretty interesting read.

Premise starts out as a "humanity vs the stars" kind of story, but instead of sending young people to their deaths, the futuristic human society instead recruits old people who have already lived full lives. You can enlist towards the end of your natural life to transfer your mind to a (photo)synthetic purpose-built humanoid super soldier body. If you survive a period of time (5 years?), you earn another shot at life and can elect to become a colonist for far away worlds. Most don't get that far. Your usual "long-term relationship tensions," "humans are always bad guys," "what will technology think of next?" tropes apply.

Another series I liked is the Castle Federation series by Glynn Stewart.

This series spans a much shorter timeframe throughout its books but contains much more civil-war type political intrigue and seems to focus more on an important battle or two per book. As such, you get a more granular view of one starship officers experiences from the unit level up to the fleet. Tactics, deception, and an almost constant state of Pyrrhic victories help to make you feel like you aren’t simply following around a grand hero figure who is the unspoken savior of the galaxy. I don’t really remember how the series starts, but it’s mostly (or all) human-vs-human conflicts.

Last series I enjoyed is the Frontlines storyline by Marko Kloos.

In contrast to the stories above, it’s humans (mostly) good, aliens bad. A dystopian future is rocked by the sudden appearance of monolithic and seemingly invincible stegosaurus-like alien beings. They show up, terraform your world with CO2, and brush off humanity like we’re ants. You follow a few main characters who give you insight to how the big governments operate, how soldiers are thrown into unwinnable conflicts, and how freedom fighters back home protest against the majority of humanity’s production efforts going towards war while ignoring the problems at home. There’s a good mix of hopeless alien combat, human conflict and frustration towards the military industrial complex, Judge Dredd-like slums, and some anthropology thrown into the mix. Facing an existential threat, would you throw everything at offense and let your people starve?

What? No love for the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey? I love em. Gotta love genetically engineered dragons.

Simon R. Greens Deathstalker series is pretty much what you're describing. Very much space opera, melodramatic and big on action. They're not incredibly well written but lots of fun.

How about the Uplift series by David Brin? Start with Sundiver

Revelation Space.

Niven's Ringworld series

Foundation?

The Helliconia trilogy might be worth looking into. It's pretty unique in the genre.. It's not deeply political though if that's what you're looking for. The main character is essentially the planet itself and how the global society of people living on that planet changes over centuries. The seasons on the planet last hundreds of years too so it's adds some interesting evolutionary survival ideas in there.

The Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson. It's a huge favorite across our family.

Thankyou DoisBigo, I didn't know other people liked Kris Longknife and Honor Harrington. I pickup random space operas from charity stores -- which if their shelves are any metric then it seems my entire country wants to read nothing but stories about ordinary people on earth; good stuff is few and far between.

Hal Spacejock is good. I found the second book first, it was a hoot (opening: robot on the spaceship panics after making a mistake, wipes its own memory so nothing can be proven, the ship then starts failing and the robot assumes the captain must be at fault for poor maintenance). Some surreal space-opera travel scenes across planets towards the end mixed in with lots of humour.

"Revelation Space" by Alastair Reynolds was definitely interesting. At times a bit stretched out, but it had some cool concepts in it (like safely arresting your fall down an elevator shaft by reversing the thrust of an entire spaceship). Scale was insane (crazy time & space) but then it all focuses on a few smaller points, which felt a bit too distilled for what felt like a big universe moments before. Characters were 50/50 and I didn't enjoy some of their arcs, but the others were good.

A few months back I finished "Crystal Healer" (the dodgiest book title ever if you didn't know it was a space opera) by S.L. Viehl. I remember almost nothing from it, except a hot cat-woman that was enslaved to the main character. No mental staying power whatsoever, but I think I enjoyed reading it.

I recently found a book on my shelf "War Games" by Brian Stableford. I thought I hadn't read this. I opened the first page and found:

2013-02-25 I want to crush this novel. Why? ... because the author did not write a sequel.

No idea what it's about :D

Thankyou everyone in this topic for suggestions. If you want any of the books I mention then just poke me, it's better I send them to someone else rather than let them sit on my shelf forever. I'm in Australia.

Have you read any of Alastair Reynolds's books?

House of Suns, while just a single book, felt like it had one of the biggest universes I'd ever read a story set in, and is my favorite sci-fi book, ever.

For something bigger, look into his Revelation Space series. It's a bunch of books, some connected, some not, all set in the same universe.

Children Of Time Trilogy.

Amazing books that explore topics like Consciousness and Intelligence from angles you wouldn't expect

Have you read Hannu Rajaniemis Jean le Flambeur series?

It's a very high concept narrative, that begins with our main character being broken out of a simulated prison, where he is forced to play endless games of the prisoners dilemma, against endless copies of himself and other prisoners.

It continues on to tell a story set within our solar system, that's complex on levels that can be hard to keep up with at times.

In this universe, where people end and software begins, is blurred, and the same is true for the edge between reality and simulation.

Some people are doomed to exist and be used as mere software for completing complex tasks, while others step through matter-conversion gates between the real and simulated on a regular basis.

I really, really loved it.

The Three Body problem is a an absolutely phenomenal take on the Dark Forest Theory.

It has the unfortunate quality of reading like a news article at times, recounting events, rather than feeling like an illustrated narrative. And some plot points hinge on the authors pre-conceived notions about gender that really didn't sit well with me.

Ooh, another operatic that comes to mind: 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie