Challenge: Books that make great gifts

This is part of the weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. If you'd like to participate, you can find the prompts here. They also put up a post every Wednesday where you go and link your response -- and see everyone else's. Check out their homepage to find it.

The challenge for this week is "books that would make good gifts."

So...

Well, for starters, I am definitely recommending The Murderbot Diaries. However, much as I adore them, Martha Wells also has an extensive back-catalog of other books, including the very atypical fantasy adventures in the The Books of the Raksura (which... now I think I need to go re-read, because I adore them). Basically, if you enjoy Murderbot, you should really look through the rest of her work. 

I'd also recommend Matt Wallace's Savage Legion, which was both entertaining and fascinating; the sequel is due out in July. It's a multiple-POV high fantasy with a mix of action, intrigue, and exploration. 

I'm currently reading Forgotten Stars and Distant Seas by J.B. Rockwell, which starts out looking like it's going to be military SF but transitions easily to a story of exploration and discovery tinged with bits of horror; by the end, I think it may turn out to be a full-blown Cosmic Horror story set in space, but I haven't gotten there yet. I'd still recommend it just on the strength of the first half of the book. 

And if those aren't enough, well, I have long list of other recommendations scattered back through the Blogging Challenge posts, and I invite you to take a look.