Kameron Hurley‘s The Stars are Legion (2017) is a good old-fashioned space opera featuring an exclusively female cast of characters. There is a groundhog-day element at work, as the protagonist has repeatedly failed in an attempt to seize control of (some significant part of) a galaxy and ends up being “recycled,” which leaves her at the center of a massive planet, having to navigate outward through successive layers of worlds/civilizations to try once again. These two narratives are each handled well, and are consistently compelling and engaging, and the protagonist’s memory loss makes all the narrators somewhat unreliable, which is handled deftly.
It’s all a bit complicated–the planets are actually spaceships, and they are alive, and the various nested areas within them are unaware of each other, and the advanced technology is decidedly nature-based (the best example being the lovely invention of a cephalopod gun, which shoots octopus-like things that burn through any flesh to which they attach).
It’s a nicely executed page-turner, and recommended if that’s what you’re looking for.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
I mean, come on, cephalopod guns. I mean that in a more general sense: the nature/technology fusion that Hurley invents is intriguing, and I like both the inventiveness and her trust in the reader that allows her not even to attempt to explain how it all works.