Space opera with badass female leads never gets enough love. Well, maybe what I should say is that it needs more love from me.
So I wanted to highlight a selection of books from authors who’ve done female protagonists who really own it as leaders.
The sole exception to the female lead thing is Empire Reborn, which features a male lead, but I wanted to include the book here, because as of now, it’s a new release, and I know AK Duboff’s books are excellent.
Everything on this list is well-reviewed, so at the very least, it’d be a great idea to download the sample and see how you like it, then buy the whole book when you’re hooked and feel like the premise will deliver!
Oh, and don’t forget to enter my giveaway! Go here to enter!
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. After years on the run with her sister and enduring the constant paranoia of living planet-side, going off-radar gives her exactly what she wants: freedom.
That dream is shattered.
A system-wide attack decimates humanity and leaves the survivors scraping for clues. And Karin might know where to look.
But digging into her past comes with a whole new set of secrets and consequences, none of which she wants to face. Plagued by strange dreams of her sister and a sense of growing danger, Karin and the crew of the Nemina must race desperately across space to find their loved ones—and answers.
Jason Sietinen lives in the shadow of greatness. He’s worked hard to become a TSS officer in his own right, but having war heroes for parents is hard to top.
When Jason is assigned to investigate a mysterious attack, he finds evidence of powerful transdimensional beings never before seen. Or so he thought.
Jason soon learns that critical information was lost through the millennia: Tarans had an ancient treaty with the aliens. Unfortunately, rogue actions by a shadow faction within the Empire just broke the peace.
Rudely yanked from cryo-sleep to find herself among a crew of modded humans in deep space, and on a burning spaceship, no less, Daisy’s world just got a whole lot more complicated. And it was only going to get worse.
As if the creepy cyborg and the mechanically-enhanced human crew weren’t bad enough, what was supposed to be a simple flight home to Earth was going horribly wrong. A deadly plot was unfolding. One that could jeopardize the entire human race. And Daisy found herself stuck in the middle
It wasn’t her job, saving the world, and she sure as hell didn’t want it. But the tough young woman didn’t have a choice. But with Daisy reluctantly coming to the rescue, did humanity even stand a chance?
After a soldier is left for dead, Eva Delgado’s life begins to unravel.
The truth of what happened remains a mystery, and the government will stop at nothing to keep it buried.
Together with the unit’s medic, Eva finds herself branded a terrorist and enemy of the State, hunted by two opposing governments.
When the pair uncover a plot that could have ramifications for the whole galaxy, they know they have to act, but it will take all of their training, cunning and just a bit of luck to do what no one else has achieved.
But what do you do when every secret begets another? And how far will you go to find the answers?
On a lost world, far removed from Earth, a group of humans struggle to survive.
Two thousand years after their ancestors lost control of a hidden genetics research facility, the descendants of mankind have been reduced to a tribe of two hundred survivors. They fight, kill, and die in an endless cycle, all in the hope that things will get better.
Lucia is one of these colonists and the daughter of the tribe’s leader, the Director. Together with several other candidates, she must soon undergo a trial to decide her father’s replacement. The winner will shape the future of the entire colony.
She will need to survive monsters while searching darkened tunnels for Cores to win, but making through each day is hard enough.
Forget winning the trial. The real challenge is staying alive.
Sera leads a simple life.
A little smuggling, some drinking contests, and captaining her star freighter, Sabrina. But when she picks up a mysterious shipping container on Coburn Station, things begin to go wrong. She finds herself at odds with The Mark, a dangerous pirate organization that wants the cargo on her ship.
Inside the container she not only finds a woman, but a secret thought lost millennia ago. The woman is Tanis Richards, and she knows the location of the Intrepid, a missing colony ship from humanity’s golden age.
Sera knows how to help Tanis and the Intrepid. But to do that, she will need to reveal a secret that will pull her back into a life she left long ago. A life from which she was exiled in shame and disgrace.
