The First Sister

If you're looking for a good space opera, I would like to recommend "The First Sister" by Linden A Lewis. It's a well paced, sci-fi drama with beautifully interwoven storylines and solid representation.

I really fell in love with and got invested in all the main characters. The perspective switches to tell their stories separately while creating a bigger picture of the structure of civilization as a whole. I've found it can be difficult to build such a complicated universe without bogging the reader down in exposition, and Linden handles it all expertly.

This is the first book in a series, but I appreciate that it stands quite well as its own book. The novel wraps up both the story and character arcs well and ends with them each continuing their adventures in a way that, to me, felt like it could either lead well into another book or serve as a general "and the story goes on..." type of ending that added to the world building and the sense that the events of this book don't exist in a bubble.