I watched and read the entire series. Much of it is boring and poorly written both from a style perspective as well as character development. It’s famous but doesn’t live up to many scifi masterpieces imo.

What would you recommend?

Scifi series:

Dune (the first 3 books) Vinge’s Deepness series Dark Forest (3 Body Problem…)

Alastair Reynolds "Revelation Space" series was really good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space_series

Also, both the "Children of Time" and "Shadows of the Apt" series by Adrian Tchaikovsky are excellent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Tchaikovsky#Bibliograph...

Strong disagree. There are very few space operas which get both world building and character building so right. They usually are either great epic stories or amazing character introspectives but rarely both.

The fascinating thing to me about _The Expanse_ is the disparity between the Novels and the TV Show. It's the same content, but in a different medium and environment.

I would call the novels well executed, enjoyable and very readable action adventures, using well-worn tropes. There is nothing ground-breaking in them. It's not what's currently at the edges of the genre in the written form - It's not Greg Egan, it aint Ted Chiang or Adrian Tchaikovsky. M. John Harrison does not make an appearance. It's not even Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds or Iain M. Banks.

The TV show however, is quite something, it is one of the flagship sci-fi TV series. And it does indicate that written and visual sci-fi might be different stages of development , with the TV version lagging by decades.

Its great!

Have you read / listened to The Sun Eater Series?