it's a quadrilogy, not a book, but I'd pick Ada Palmer's _Terra Ignota_ series without hesitation. I'm comfortable arguing for it fitting within the constraint of the question, largely because it is making one sustained argument that's carried out throughout the entire series -- it's very much one book that happens to be like 4000 pages long rather than four separate books.
Anyway, Ada Palmer is a sci-fi writer whose day job is as a professor of Renaissance and Enlightenment-era European philosophy, and everything in this series (set in the 2500s in a world where the geographical nation state collapsed and world governments are now large voluntary organizations) is heavily informed by her training as a historian of philosophy.
She finished the series last year, and though each book has gotten nominated for the big awards, she's had the misfortune of publishing on more or less the same schedule as N.K. Jemisin, whose stuff typically wins the Hugo, Nebula, or both. The fandom is teensy tiny -- I've seen it described as "six people and a shoelace" -- but most people who read it get fanatically devoted to it.
> it's very much one book that happens to be like 4000 pages long rather than four separate books.
It's a good way to approach it. Because otherwise part two and so on feel "more of the same", and you may be a bit let down (like me) hoping there would be "new schtick" in the new books
Oh man, I started reading Too Like the Lightning a while ago on the recommendation of a fantasy author friend. It was really good, but I got derailed and then had to take it back to the library and never finished it. I need to pick this series back up.
But it's worth saying, N.K. Jemisin deserved those wins. I've read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy and Broken Earth blew my mind when I read it the first time. I had to stop reading sci-fi/fantasy for a while afterwards because nothing could hold a candle to it.
It was a master class in craft, with an incredibly well done drip of very thorough world building and some really fantastic reveals. I don't want to say too much - I normally don't mind spoilers but I really loved the reveals in these novels. I don't think I'd have wanted to be spoiled on them going in.
Anyway, Ada Palmer is a sci-fi writer whose day job is as a professor of Renaissance and Enlightenment-era European philosophy, and everything in this series (set in the 2500s in a world where the geographical nation state collapsed and world governments are now large voluntary organizations) is heavily informed by her training as a historian of philosophy.
She finished the series last year, and though each book has gotten nominated for the big awards, she's had the misfortune of publishing on more or less the same schedule as N.K. Jemisin, whose stuff typically wins the Hugo, Nebula, or both. The fandom is teensy tiny -- I've seen it described as "six people and a shoelace" -- but most people who read it get fanatically devoted to it.