I would like to nominate A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.
It’s a fantastic entry into the genre. Interesting future human cultures. The world feels very fleshed out and unlike anything I have read before. It plays with the concept of what an “alien” even is.
I love pretty much all of his books but this trilogy was truly epic.
Costco updates their prices based on a number of factors. But they are running the data every 15 minutes to adapt to market changes.
Due to their volume of sales and this near instant price adjustments you will see their prices react to the “market” faster than most other stations.
When prices were at an all-time high a year or so ago and then Biden announced he was releasing some reserves my local station, at a point in time was over 1$ less per gallon than the nearest station
Basically everything by Adrian Tchaikovsky But specifically Children of Time series. Humans are essentially the “ancient” alien race. It’s a unique spin on it.
Against the storm is one of my favorite entries to the sub genre in a long time. I play loads of city/colony sims and this title stood out as something unique without getting away from the core elements of a colony sim. It also takes the best parts of rogue likes without making the game feel impossibly hard (but you can ramp up the difficulty in a variety of ways including in the middle of playing)
But like others have stated it’s not going to scratch the same itch as massive city builders like Cities, or factory games.
Still it felt fresh and I dumped a couple hundred hours into it already.
My buddy’s and I have started reading through stormlight together. I put it off for years but I have been really enjoying it. Already mostly done with book two.