Books like 'Challenges of the Deeps'
Readers who enjoyed Challenges of the Deeps by Ryk E. Spoor also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
sc-fi space mystery action / adventure space-opera super-powered female-mc
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A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsMiles Vorkosigan has a problem: unrequited love for the beautiful widow Ekaterin Vorsoisson, violently allergic to marriage after her first exposure. If a frontal assault won't do, Miles thinks, try subterfuge. He has a cunning plan... Lord Mark Vorkosigan, Miles' brother, also has a problem: his love has just become unrequited again. But he has a cunning plan.. -
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsNow a USA Today bestseller! Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2021Bookpage's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee for Best Science Fiction Book of 2021"[An] all around brilliant space opera, I absolutely love it... -
Space Specter by Jenny Schwartz
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Saloon Sector is the Federation’s official frontier, but beyond it lurks the Badstars. Bandits hide there. The Saloon Sector is Sheriff Max Smith’s territory. Since the revelation of his secret identity, life has changed for Max and Thelma. Their relationship is under increased pressure... -
Vorkosigan's Game: The Vor Game \ Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOmnibus of The Vor Game and the novella "Borders of Infinity"... -
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Reformer by Richard F. Weyand
Rated: 4.57 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsTHE EMPIRE NEEDS A REFORMERThe Sintaran Empire rules three hundred trillion subjects on 150,000 planets. Two trillion of them are government employees. Ruling over this vast bureaucracy is the Imperial Council. It’s only check: The Empress, whose every decree is binding law.The uneasy balance of power between the Council and the Throne is eroding... -
The Red Admiral by C.R. Daems
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsAnna's success as the Eastar NIA station chief has catapulted her into the position of Director of NIA Stations. Anna is uncomfortable with the promotion and bored. She has a master chief secretary, a lieutenant aide-de-camp, and fifteen commanders and their staff to do the work. But she suspects not all of her commanders are happy with their new, very young admiral or are doing their jobs... -
Chosen of Chaos by Benjamin Medrano
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 9 ratingsEvelyn enjoyed living a nice, quiet life in an anarchic pirate port, far from the world she’d once conquered.Then came an attack by mercenaries that made her angry... -
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... -
Trader's Leap by Sharon Lee, Steve Miller
Rated: 4.47 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsNEW ENTRY IN THE LANDMARK LIADEN UNIVERSE® SERIESThe only bridge between past and future is a leap of faith. Pursued by enemies, exiled Liaden clan Korval is settling into a new base on backworld Surebleak. Moving is expensive, as is war, and Korval is strapped for cash. Delm Korval has therefore instructed Master Trader Shan yos'Galan to design and implement new trade routes, quickly... -
Oracle by Douglas E. Richards
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsA breathtaking near-future thriller. From the NY Times bestselling author whose books have been downloaded over a million times. An interstellar war is racing toward an unsuspecting Earth. Can one young woman stop it before it's too late? LA detective Anna Abbott can see brief, cryptic visions of the future. She just doesn't know it yet. But others do... -
The Dark of Light by Audrey Sharpe
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn the mid twenty-third century, unexplained planetary destruction threatens Earth’s sister planet, Gaia, and the nearly one million humans who call it home. Colonized when Earth faced environmental collapse, the planet has been a valuable agricultural resource, but the recent devastation threatens Gaia’s future. The Galactic Council assigns the crew of the Starhawke to investigate... -
Space Murder by N.L. Haverstock, Nikki Haverstock
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFor everything there is a season…Once the star student of her training class, Captain Liz Laika is now an outcast, a casualty of family scandal. Now stuck in the worst post in the Fleet, she should keep her head down. But when a Cerulean passenger is found decapitated, and Liz is framed for the murder, she has no choice but to fight for her life... -
Originator by Joel Shepherd
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA quarter of a million people die in the destruction of the moon Cresta. The League civil war is accelerating out of control, but projections indicate that as their technologically induced sociological dysfunction continues, all of humanity may face a similar fate... -
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23 Years on Fire by Joel Shepherd
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsCommander Cassandra Kresnov has her hands full. She must lead an assault against the Federation world of Pyeongwha, where a terrible sociological phenomenon has unleashed hell against the civilian population... -
Junkyard by Lindsay Buroker
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsMcCall Richter works as a skip tracer, tracking down criminals, con men, and people who stop making payments on their fancy new spaceships. Her job description says nothing about locating vast quantities of stolen maple syrup, but thanks to her helpful new android employee, she finds herself tramping through a “sugar house” on a frosty moon full of suspicious characters... -
Building Victoria by M.D. Cooper
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Intrepid is drifting slowly between the stars. After near calamity at LHS 1565, the ship is headed for Kapteyn's Star to make repairs. There, the crew will need to spend decades building a temporary industrial base. Across the void, the Noctus prepare to leave Sirius for the same destination. Their plan is to colonize the system and forge a new lives for themselves .. -
Hard Luck Hank: Stank Delicious by Steven Campbell
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBelvaille has cemented its place as the most important System in the galaxy and Hank is working as an official Factotum, negotiating deals between gangs and noblemen under the watchful eye of the Arch Minister. When his ever-capable butler, Cliston, is approached to become the general manager of a Super Class glocken team, Hank is hired not only as protection, but as a player... -
Vexing Voss by Gail Koger
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFor Voss, a Coletti Warlord, conquering the universe is a piece of cake. After all, he's a master of psychic seduction; no one can resist him when he sets his mind to it.Zoey Jones is determined to find her mother's killer. Surrendering to a fierce Coletti warrior is the last thing on her mind... -
Chaos Vector by Megan E. O'Keefe
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsDazzling space battles, intergalactic politics, and rogue AI collide in the second book in this epic space opera by award-winning author Megan O'Keefe.Sanda and Tomas are fleeing for their lives after letting the most dangerous smartship in the universe run free... -
Red Angel by C.R. Daems
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAnna nearly dies, along with all her family, at age four from the deadly Cacao virus. But she survives, thanks to a poisonous red-headed krait. The medical community is excited since there is no known cure for the virus, but Anna and her snake, Red, have a symbiotic relationship—containment, not cure. If she is ever separated from Red, she will die.Anna struggles through foster homes... -
Rare Earth by Kurt Allan, Derek Shoales
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA lost mining crew, 400 million miles from Earth. A retired miner journeys to find out why. “There’s something out there…” Waldo Packwood has had a rough time of things lately. He’s lost his job, his friends, and finally his family. At 50 years old, he’s living alone in a small apartment wondering what’s happened to his life... -
The Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsStill new to her duties as Lady Vorkosigan, Ekaterin is working together with expatriate scientist Enrique Borgos on a radical scheme to recover the lands of the Vashnoi exclusion zone, lingering radioactive legacy of the Cetagandan invasion of the planet Barrayar. When Enrique’s experimental bioengineered creatures go missing, the pair discover that the zone still conceals deadly old secrets... -
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by Alexander Freed
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Go beyond the film with a novelization featuring new scenes and expanded material.As the shadows of the Empire loom ever larger across the galaxy, so do deeply troubling rumors. The Rebellion has learned of a sinister Imperial plot to bring entire worlds to their knees. Deep in Empire-dominated space, a machine of unimaginable destructive power is nearing completion... -
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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... -
Demon by John Varley
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsISBN moved from less recent editionThe satellite-sized alien Gaea has gone completely insane. She has transformed her love of old movies into monstrous realities. She is Marilyn Monroe. She is King Kong. And now she must be destroyed... -
Ghosts of Trappist by K.B. Wagers
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsNeoG--the Near-Earth Orbital Guard, a diverse military force that patrols and protects the solar system, inspired by the real-life mission of the Coast Guard--and the crew of Zuma's Ghost are under attack, and shocking truths are about to be exposed.What the black takes should stay in the black... -
The Gangster by Scott Sigler
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTHE GANGSTER is the sixth book in the Galactic Football League series.The ongoing mental battle between star quarterback Quentin Barnes and team owner Gredok the Splithead is coming to a head. Endless threats and the promise of ultraviolence hangs on their every word... -
The Dust of Kaku by Julia Huni
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThey say you can never go home. But, you can clean it. Triana Moore, maintenance bot technician on Station Kelly-Kornienko, prefers life in orbit where the air is purified, the commute is short, and nature doesn’t get all over you. But when a minor infraction gets her sent to remedial training dirtside, she doesn’t complain... -
House of Shards by Walter Jon Williams
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsDrake Maijstral, the most daring Allowed Burglar in the galaxy, is now setting his sights on the Eltdown Shard, a spectacular necklace embodying the flame of a dying star. Through the media vids, the audience watches him--in an intricate plot designed to both steal the necklace and foil his major rival... -
Black Dawn: A Space Opera Adventure Series by K. Gorman
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsGenetic engineering. Conspiracy. An unstoppable attack.Karin Makos lives a lie. Genetically engineered from birth and raised in a scientific compound to gain unnatural powers, she has since escaped and built another life, hidden from those who created her. For her, the chance to pilot a small-time scrounging vessel to remote corners of space is the dream... -
Paloma by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAs a Retrieval Artist, Miles Flint helps the Disappeared, saving the lives of those oppressed under the Earth Alliance regime. He owes his livelihood, and his very sense of honor, to a woman known as Paloma. It was she who was responsible for setting him on this path—and now she has been murdered.Summoned by Paloma’s desperate call, Miles reaches her apartment too late... -
Buried Deep by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsForensic anthropologist Aisha Costard has been summoned to Mars to examine skeletal remains recently discovered beneath a building erected by the Disty aliens. The bones belong to a human who vanished thirty years ago with her children. She is believed to have been one of the Disappeared, outlaws wanted for crimes against alien civilizations... -
Into the Fire by Elizabeth Moon
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn this new military sci-fi thriller from the author of Cold Welcome, space fleet commander Kylara Vatta uncovers deadly secrets on her latest mission--shedding light on her own family's past... -
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Fire Season by David Weber, Jane Lindskold
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFire in the forest–and a cry for help from a trapped and desperate alien mother! Unfortunately, this is one cry no human can hear. Stephanie Harrington, precocious fourteen-year-old Provisional Forest Ranger on the planet Sphinx, knows something is wrong from the uneasy emotion that is flooding into her from her treecat friend, Climbs Quickly... -
Choices of One by Timothy Zahn
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom #1 New York Times bestselling author Timothy Zahn comes a brand-new Star Wars adventure, set in the time between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back and featuring the young Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia Organa, and the beloved Mara Jade. The fate of the Rebellion rests on Luke Skywalker’s next move... -
Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratings2057. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclearpowered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. But when Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, inexplicably leaves its natural orbit and heads out of the solar system at high speed, Bella is ordered to shadow it for the few vital days before it falls forever out of reach...Categorized as:
female-mc space-opera 21st-century action-adventure adult aliens anthologies audiobook -
Tenacious by Mike Shepherd
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsThere’s no rest for a Longknife—even if you’re a newlywed. Vice Admiral Kris Longknife’s honeymoon gets cancelled when she hears that the space raider’s home world may have been discovered. Finding where the raiders came from could be the key to saving humanity... -
Leviathan by Erik Schubach
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWhen the Earth is threatened by a slowly expanding sun, mankind embarks upon a mission to send a mammoth Worldship to settle a new planet across the stars. The preternatural races step out of hiding to work with the humans to save what they can from their dying world... -
Bloodline by Claudia Gray
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsWitness the birth of the ResistanceWhen the Rebellion defeated the Empire in the skies above Endor, Leia Organa believed it was the beginning to a lasting peace. But after decades of vicious infighting and partisan gridlock in the New Republic Senate, that hope seems like a distant memory... -
Redoubtable by Mike Shepherd
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsLieutenant Commander Kris Longknife has precise orders: seek out, engage, and destroy pirates, slavers, and drug lords operating beyond the rim of human space-without interfering in Peterwald family affairs. But when slavers kidnap a twelve-year-old girl, Kris's mission becomes personal. And if destroying the pirate compound flattens some Peterwald interests-well, to hell with politics... -
Killashandra by Anne McCaffrey
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsKillashandra Ree's life was one of catastrophic changes. She had joined the Heptite Guild to become a crystal singer, get rich, and forget her past. And at first everything went just as she had hoped. In one season on the deadly beautiful world of Ballybran, she had sung Black Crystal, grown wealthy, and met a man who made her sorrows seem unworthy of notice...Categorized as:
female-mc space-opera action-adventure audiobook book classics dragons female-author -
Into the Dark by Claudia Gray
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsNot everyone who hears the call to adventure wants to answer it....Jedi Padawan Reath Silas loves adventure—reading about it, that is, not living it. Content to spend hours browsing the Jedi Archives on Coruscant, Reath dreams of being one of the great scholars of the Jedi Order...Categorized as:
space-opera super-powered action-adventure aliens audiobook book children children-books -
Defending Elysium by Brandon Sanderson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsThis story originally appeared in the October/November 2008 Asimov’s Science Fiction (in the US) and the UPC Science Fiction collection (in Europe)."An image came to him. An image of humankind escaping into space. An image of human merchants trading and cheating, of human tyrants capturing the Varvax, Tenasi, and Hommar. Images of wars, of fighting, of a paradise destroyed... -
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Solo Command by Aaron Allston
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWraith Squadron: they are the Rebel Alliance's ultimate strike force. Sleek, swift, and deadly, they are the first in battle, the last line of defense. Now they must find and destroy a wily enemy more powerful than the Empire itself.Their covert mission has been a success. The enemy has been vanquished. Or so they thought... -
Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse by Troy Denning
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThere can be no surrender.There will be no mercy.It’s not just the future of the galaxy at stake—It’s the destiny of the Force. In the stunning finale of the epic Fate of the Jedi series, Jedi and Sith face off—with Coruscant as their battlefield. For the Sith, it’s the chance to restore their dominance over the galaxy that forgot them for so long... -
Ascension by Victor Dixen
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratings'This thrilling space odyssey will keep you turning pages late into the night.'C. J. Daugherty, author of NIGHT SCHOOLSix girls, six boys. Each in the two separate bays of a single spaceship. They have six minutes each week to seduce and to make their choices, under the unblinking eye of the on-board cameras...Categorized as:
space-opera action-adventure audiobook book contemporary dystopia fiction love-triangle -
Undaunted by Mike Shepherd
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsKris Longknife encounters some peaceful aliens who have come to warn humanity of an unidentifiable force that is roaming the galaxy, obliterating everything in its path-a path now leading directly toward the human worlds... -
Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhen the Krakau came to Earth, they planned to invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species. This would have worked out better for all involved if they hadn’t arrived after a mutated plague wiped out half the planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically destroyed human civilization. You know—your standard apocalypse... -
Flinx Transcendent by Alan Dean Foster
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom one of the most brilliant imaginations in science fiction comes Flinx Transcendent, Alan Dean Foster's thrilling conclusion to the series that began over thirty-five years ago-the epic adventures of Flinx and his flying minidrag companion, Pip...
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