HBMK said:
I have gone through all the books in my shelf and have run out, but I have no idea what to read next. Preferred genres: sci-fi, fantasy, horror, crime, cyberpunk, steampunk.
Thanks
Well, let's see... there's a few series I read that fall into those categories. I'm sure *someone* has recommended A Song of Ice and Fire by now, so I'll try not to add too much to that besides saying "They really are good. Heavy reading, but good reading."
One of the longest sci-fi series I've gotten into (like, 13 main entries, 4 side-story spinoffs and 6 short-story anthologies) is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. The series starts off following Honor Harrington, a newly-appointed Captain in the star navy of the Kingdom of Manticore, a small, trade-focused star system whose claim to fame is a network of wormholes that makes their system a crucial center-point in interstellar trade. Things don't quite go according to plan for her, and her Kingdom has also been staring down a war with one of their larger, expansionist neighbors for decades.
Overall, it's a pretty fun series. Lots of politics, drama, and space-battles, and a lot of very memorable characters that keep popping up throughout the rest of the series. Unlike other sci-fi (star trek and star wars, come to mind) it takes a more realistic view of both military structure and space battles. Ships are lobbing missile barrages at each other at ranges of 4 million kilometers, and lasers are considered point-blank, last-ditch weapons because they're only effective at ranges of a couple light-seconds. It's more akin to modern naval combat (missile cruisers shooting at eachother from beyond the horizon) than the usual "WWIII in space" that other sci-fi has popularized. Point-defense weapons and electronic warfare are also hugely important.
The first book in the series (and I believe the second, too) are actually up in full, for free, on the publisher's site. You can read them right on your browser, or save them to some other format. Here's the link for the first book: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0743435710/0743435710.htm?blurb
Another series I'm quite fond of, also by David Weber is the Safehold series. It's... kind of weird to explain. The gist is, humanity is dead. Systematically exterminated by an alien race known as the Gbaba. Only a single colony ship managed to escape the war without being hunted down and destroyed, and it went on to settle an Earth-like world they named Safehold. A faction within the people in charge of the colony ship seized control, and in an attempt to never be spotted by the Gbaba or any space faring race ever again, they instituted a system to keep humanity permanently at a pre-industrial level. They did this by altering the memories of all of the colonists while in stasis, to make them believe their first memories are literally waking up on Safehold after being created by God, and that the colony staff were God's angels. They then manufactured a religion, the main purpose of which was to label high-technology heretical and to preach against bucking the norm that the angels had established. Needless to say, the rest of the colony staff did not approve, and it all basically went Lord of the Flies, with them killing each other and leaving the colonists alone in the world, completely unaware of the truth about the Church and why they're all there. Cut to about 800 years later when the main story begins, and the Church of Humanity Unchained is a global superpower, able to raise and remove rulers on a whim, and more bloated and corrupt than the Catholic Church ever was prior to the reformation.
And then an android with the digitally-recorded memories of one of the original colony staff wakes up from her 800 year sleep, and sets out to bring down the church and help push humanity back up to the stars.
If I had to describe it, it's... kind of like Game of Thrones, but with less sex, sci-fi elements hovering in the background, and set in the 1700-1800's. There's a lot of politics as Nimue (the digitally-recorded memories of a woman 800 years dead, downloaded into a robotic body) tries to unite various people, rulers and kingdoms, and set her plans to destroy the church into motion. Some very fun characters, and lots of naval and land battles as well. I'm just a big sucker for that time period. Muskets, cannons, galleons and such.
The first few chapters of the first book are up online for free if you want to take a look. http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0765315009/0765315009.htm?blurb
I recently read "John Dies At The End" by David Wong and it was some of the best sci-fi writing I've read in the last decade not to mention completely hilarious. DONT WATCH THE MOVIE though, it will completely ruin it for you. It is a series and I've acquired the second volume ("This book is covered in Spiders") but I haven't read it yet.
