Books like 'What We See In The Smoke'
Readers who enjoyed What We See In The Smoke by Ben Berman Ghan also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
futuristic sc-fi space action / adventure lgbtq dystopia time-travel literary-fiction
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Layers of Force by Lindsay Buroker
Rated: 4.72 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe exciting conclusion to the Star Kingdom series!Even though Professor Casmir Dabrowski has been fighting for months to help the kingdom and humanity as a whole, few people in positions of power have appreciated his unorthodox methods. Now he's a captive of the king and being taken back to his home world without his friends or the crushers he relies upon to protect him... -
Home Front by Lindsay Buroker
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsCasmir and his allies have struck a devastating blow to the powerful prince who sent invaders into their star system, but war still rages at home. Worse, the prince has escaped with a lethal bioweapon, and he intends to wipe out all human life on Odin. Casmir could lose his parents, his friends, and everyone he holds dear... -
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsalternate cover for this ISBN can be found hereThe universe began as an enormous breath being held.From the acclaimed author of Stories of Your Life and Others — the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film Arrival — comes a ground-breaking new collection of short fiction: nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories... -
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsSo far the Foundation was safe. But there was a hidden Second Foundation to protect the first. The Mule has yet to find it, but he was getting closer all the time. The men of the Foundation sought it, too, to escape from Mule's mind control. Only Arkady, a 14 year-old girl seemed to have the answer, or did she..Categorized as:
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The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsFrom the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust — and the man who risks everything to reunite them.A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth...Categorized as:
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Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsOn the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all... -
Aurora's End by Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsThe squad you love is out of time. Prepare for the thrilling finale in the epic, best-selling Aurora Cycle series about a band of unlikely heroes who just might be the galaxy's last hope for survival.Is this the end? What happens when you ask a bunch of losers, discipline cases, and misfits to save the galaxy from an ancient evil? The ancient evil wins, of course. Wait. . . . Not. So. Fast... -
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsSeconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of the The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out of work actor...Categorized as:
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The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 47 ratingsOne of Isaac Asimov's SF masterpieces, this stand-alone novel is a monument of the flowering of SF in the 20th century. It is widely regarded as Asimov's single best SF novel and one every SF fan should read.Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a member of the elite of the future...Categorized as:
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Nyxia Uprising by Scott Reintgen
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the highly anticipated Nyxia Triad series finale, Emmett and the Genesis team must join forces with a surprising set of allies if they’re ever to make it home alive.Desperate to return home to Earth and claim the reward Babel promised, Emmett and the Genesis team join forces with the Imago. Babel’s initial attack left their home city in ruins, but that was just part of the Imago’s plan... -
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 46 ratingsThe Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy that they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away... -
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsIn her new novella, Sunday Times best-selling author Becky Chambers imagines a future in which, instead of terraforming planets to sustain human life, explorers of the solar system instead transform themselves. Ariadne is one such explorer. As an astronaut on an extrasolar research vessel, she and her fellow crewmates sleep between worlds and wake up each time with different features... -
Defending the Galaxy by Maria V. Snyder
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsYear 2522. Oh. My. Stars.Junior Officer Ara Lawrence here, reporting for duty. Again. It's situation critical for the security team and everyone in the base - including my parents - with a new attack from the looters imminent, a possible galaxy-wide crime conspiracy and an unstoppable alien threat. But this all pales in the face of my mind-blowing discovery about the Q-net... -
Assimilation, Love, and Other Human Oddities by Lyn Gala
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOndry and Liam have settled into a good life, but their trading is still tied up with humans, and humans are always messy. When political changes at the human base lead Ondry to attempt a difficult trade, the pair find themselves entangled in human affairs. Liam wants to help the people he left and the worlds being torn apart... -
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The Nemesis by S.J. Kincaid
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn the heart-pounding conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Diabolic series, the Empire teeters on the edge of destruction as rumors spread that Nemesis is still alive.Three years ago, Tyrus Domitrian shocked the galaxy by killing the woman he swore to love forever. The woman for whom he upended the Empire. The woman with whom he wanted to build a new and brighter future... -
The Fractured Dark by Megan E. O'Keefe
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDying planets, dangerous conspiracies, and secret romance abound in the second installment of the Devoured Worlds trilogy by award-winning author Megan E. O'Keefe. Naira and Tarquin have escaped vicious counter-revolutionaries, misprinted monsters, and the pull of a dying planet... -
Earth Star by Janet Edwards
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsSequel to Earth Girl.18-year-old Jarra has a lot to prove. After being awarded one of the military’s highest honours for her role in a daring rescue attempt, Jarra finds herself – and her Ape status – in the spotlight. Jarra is one of the unlucky few born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets... -
Interstellar by Greg Keyes, Jonathan Nolan
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTHE END OF EARTH WILL NOT BE THE END OF USFrom acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception), this is the chronicle of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage. At stake are the fate of a planet... Earth.. -
The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsThe time of reckoning has arrived. As a final genocidal Crusade threatens to enslave humanity forever, a new messiah has come of age. She is Aenea and she has undergone a strange apprenticeship to those known as the Others. Now her protector, Raul Endymion, one-time shepherd and convicted murderer, must help her deliver her startling message to her growing army of disciples... -
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 61 ratingsHere are stories of other worlds: of the rain-gutted forests of Venus and the deep canals of Mars; of the empty blackness of space and of planets that have no name. Here are stories, too, of Earth - new and unfamiliar in the glow of a wondrous future. And here- above all - is the story of The Illustrated man - tattooed by a witch with the most fantastic images ever seen on Earth..Categorized as:
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Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsThe award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.Edwin St...Categorized as:
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Independents by Michele Notaro
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAll I’ve wanted to do is keep my family safe. All I’ve wanted was to protect them from the evils of the world… but I’ve failed. I’ve failed so badly, and now all of them are suffering… I’m suffering… We’ve lost so many, and now that we’ve lost one of our own, I don’t know how to keep going. I don’t know how to protect them anymore... -
Dissolution by Michele Notaro
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOh god, no! Oh god help me… how am I going to save them? There’s just so much… blood… everywhere… I was supposed to protect them. I was supposed to keep them safe, but wherever I go more and more people are losing their lives, and nothing I do can save them. After so much loss, my family is breaking apart at the seams. The Taoree Legion is winning this war... -
Abandoned by W. Michael Gear
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsNow in mass market, the second book in a thrilling sci-fi action adventure, set on a treacherous alien planet where corporate threats and dangerous creatures imperil the lives of the planet's colonists.New York Times bestselling author W. Michael Gear returns us to the world he laid out with such sure purpose in Outpost... -
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Hers To Command by Cynthia Sax
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThree Battered Hearts. One Perfect Love Ace and Thrasher share a special bond. They’ve never acknowledged that connection and have never fully acted on it. The Humanoid Alliance kill cyborg males like them, deeming the warriors to be defective. Now that Ace and Thrasher have escaped, they don’t trust the cyborg council and their brethren to react any differently... -
AL:ICE Resurrection by Charles W. Lamb
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsColonel Jake Thomas has a mess on his hands. The losses on Klinan have gutted an already short-staffed defense force, and his people are scrambling to prepare for a possible attack, directly on earth. Combined with the seemingly erratic behavior of Sara, his number one go to girl, he is struggling to keep up... -
Crownchasers by Rebecca Coffindaffer
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA deadly competition for the throne will determine more than just the fate of the empire in this duology opener.Alyssa Farshot has spent her whole life trying to outrun her family legacy. Her mother sacrificed everything to bring peace to the quadrant, and her uncle has successfully ruled as emperor for decades... -
Valor's Trial by Tanya Huff
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe rousing military adventure (Locus) continues with a brand new Valor novel. Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr is a Confederation Marines marine. She's survived more deadly encounters and kept more of her officers and enlistees alive than anyone in the Corps... -
Earth Awakens by Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe story of The First Formic War continues in Earth Awakens.Nearly 100 years before the events of Orson Scott Card's bestselling novel Ender's Game, humans were just beginning to step off Earth and out into the Solar System. A thin web of ships in both asteroid belts; a few stations; a corporate settlement on Luna...Categorized as:
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The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 47 ratingsThe first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe by the Hugo Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Redshirts and Old Man's War... -
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 47 ratingsSeeking atonement for past crimes, Breq takes on a mission as captain of a troublesome new crew of Radchai soldiers, in the sequel to Ann Leckie's NYT bestselling, award-winning Ancillary Justice. A must read for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and James S. A. Corey.Breq is a soldier who used to be a warship... -
Aliens by Alan Dean Foster
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsHaving survived one encounter with an alien, Ripley is persuaded to return to the planet where her crew found the alien ship. A colony has been established there, but suddenly all contact with the settlers has been lost. Accompanied by marines, Ripley is going to find out why... -
Black Sky Morning by Hanna Dare
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA bounty hunter in over his head.Xin knows how to look out for himself, and he knows when something sounds too good to be true. But a forgotten planet filled with riches is too tempting to pass up. Fortunately Xin also knows someone who can back him up - if he doesn't arrest Xin first. A government agent who's lost hope.Jonathan Gray used to believe in a better future. Now he's not so sure... -
The Wayward Prince by Hanna Dare
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSpaceships, daring heists, and interstellar intrigue! Since murderous AIs drove humanity from Earth more than a century before, people have been rebuilding civilization. That doesn't mean the galaxy is anywhere close to being civilized. A liar and a scoundrel - and he's the good guy... -
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Partners - Book One by Melissa Good
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAfter a massive volcanic eruption puts earth into nuclear winter, the planet is cloaked in clouds and no sun penetrates. Seas cover most of the land areas except high elevations which exist as islands where the remaining humans have learned to make do with much less. People survive on what they can take from the sea and with foodstuffs supplemented from an orbiting set of space stations... -
Returned by Jane Hinchey, J.A. Hinchey
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsStruggling to discover her role in a terrifying new world where everything has changed, she must decide who she can trust.Sierra Walker has been missing for 30 years. Her family thought she was dead, only when Sierra turns up, she hasn’t aged a day. But Earth has changed drastically.Biological warfare has decimated the planet... -
Hostile Ground by Sally Malcolm, Laura Harper
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIt was meant to be an easy mission, a walk in the park. But SG-1's first trip off-world after Colonel O'Neill's return from Edora (STARGATE SG-1: One Hundred Days) proves to be anything but easy. Tapped for a covert assignment, O’Neill must conceal the truth from his team at all costs. So when Dr Daniel Jackson is injured and the mission begins to go awry, tensions quickly reach breaking point... -
Skip Trace by Jenn Burke, Kelly Jensen
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsBook three of Chaos StationZander Anatolius has been revived from the fatal effects of the super-soldier program, but now he has to face his estranged family and tell a story few would believe. With his lover and the crew of the Chaos at his side, Zander returns home to a media frenzy, threats from the military and pressure to join the family business... -
The V'Dan by Jean Johnson
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA thrilling new perspective of the world created in the explosive, national bestselling Theirs Not to Reason Why series. It’s two hundred years earlier—the age of the First Salik War. And the battle against humanity has been engaged. The V’Dan always believed they were the chosen race, destined to make a mark on the galaxy... -
Starlight by Lisa Henry
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBrady Garrett is back in space, this time as an unwilling member of a team of humans seeking to study the alien Faceless and their technology. It’s not the first time Brady’s life has been in the hands of the Faceless leader Kai-Ren, and if there’s one thing Brady hates it’s being reminded exactly how powerless he is... -
Boneyard Dog: War Dog by Andrew Beery
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsDid you ever wake up wondering where you were… and perhaps equally important, how you got there? Yeah, me too. The only the thing is, it usually happens when I’ve been drinking… and I’d been dry for the better part of two years. I’m Commodore Jeremy David Riker… my friends call me JD or just plain “Dog.” I have the dubious honor of running a starship boneyard in the middle of nowhere... -
Fallen Star by Morgan Hawke
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIsabeau Fallon, the Fallen Star is one of the finest thieves on Dyson's Ring station--until she's caught by the Skeldhi hunter, Sobehk. Trapped and altered into a skeldhi-human hybrid sex-pet known as a "rehkyt," her past is a closed door -- until it literally comes back to haunt her in the form of E'sey Khan... -
All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn early collection of short works. Includes: All the Myriad Ways (1968); Passerby (1969); For a Foggy Night (1968); Wait It Out [Known Space] (1968); The Jigsaw Man [Known Space] (1967); Not Long Before the End (1969); Unfinished Story No. 1 (1970); Unfinished Story No... -
Perilous Shield by Jack Campbell
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsNew York Times bestselling author Jack Campbell returns with the next chapter in the overthrow of the Syndicate Worlds’ oppression… Following a successful coup, the leaders of the rebel Midway Star System struggle to forge a government free enough to please its citizens yet strong enough to secure power... -
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The Heart of Valor by Tanya Huff
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr's goal is to keep both her superior officers and her troops alive as they face missions throughout the galaxy. But she's been sidelined with endless briefings and debriefings for a while, so she jumps at the chance to go to Crucible - the Marine Corps training planet - as temporary aide to Major Svensson... -
The Many-Colored Land by Julian May
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWhen a one-way time tunnel to Earth's distant past, specifically six million B.C., was discovered by folks on the Galactic Milieu, every misfit for light-years around hurried to pass through it. Each sought his own brand of happiness. But none could have guessed what awaited them. Not even in a million years...Categorized as:
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The Last Emperox by John Scalzi, Wil Wheaton
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has accelerated. Entire star systems—and billions of people—are becoming cut off from the rest of human civilization... -
Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsMary Doria Russell's debut novel, The Sparrow, took us on a journey to a distant planet and into the center of the human soul. A critically acclaimed bestseller, The Sparrow was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year, a finalist for the Book-of-the-Month Club's First Fiction Prize and the winner of the James M. Tiptree Memorial Award...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction time-travel 20th-century action-adventure adult aliens audiobook -
Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsFans have long wondered what happened to Ahsoka after she left the Jedi Order near the end of the Clone Wars, and before she re-appeared as the mysterious Rebel operative Fulcrum in Rebels. Finally, her story will begin to be told. Following her experiences with the Jedi and the devastation of Order 66, Ahsoka is unsure she can be part of a larger whole ever again... -
Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsFrom the internationally bestselling authors of THE ILLUMINAE FILES comes an epic new science fiction adventure.The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions...
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