8 science fiction book series to read if you love Dune

Teixcaalan by Arkady Martine

Teixcaalan is the name of a duology by Arkady Martine, but there's a good chance that if you're plugged into the sci-fi space you might recognize it better by the name of its first book, A Memory Called Empire. That novel won the Hugo Award as well as several other honors, and has become a mainstay of the genre in the five years since its release. Needless to say, if you like Dune and other sci-fi books, it's worth your time.

The series follows Mahit Dzmare, who is charged with becoming the new ambassador from her home on Lsel Station to the Teixcalaanli Empire. She sets out to the capital of the empire, where she discovers that the previous ambassador was seemingly murdered — and that, for some reason, it's being covered up.

And so she plumbs the intrigues at the heart of the Teixcalaani Empire, learning to navigate its cultural nuances and temptations as she tries to unravel the mystery behind her predecessor's death and hopefully keep the tenuous freedom of her home mining station in tact.

A Memory Called Empire and its sequel, A Desolation Called Peace, are powerful examinations of colonialism and how it affects those who are drawn into its orbit. This isn't a super action-driven series, but rather one which parcels out thought-provoking morsels for the reader to digest as Mahit delves deeper and deeper into Teixcalaani imperial culture, processing for herself how it's been designed to disempower those peoples swept up in its expansionist efforts.

For all its sandworms and battles, heady, though-provoking storytelling is at the heart of Dune as well. If you like books that make you sit back and think about the world and our place in it, Teixcaalan falls squarely into that category.