Reviving this thread for a hat tip to a couple of authors I've just discovered.

Ann Leckie's first novel, Ancillary Justice, is one of the best hard SF novels I can remember reading, ever. I've been kind of buzzing through brain candy, and that one was like three books ago, but my mind keeps coming back to it. Some really interesting concepts of distributed intelligence.

Also, Nnedi Okorafor, best known as a YA writer (which, I've enjoyed her YA stuff too), but her first adult fantasy, Who Fears Death, completely blew me away. It's intense, violent, could trigger some people, but for heroic female characters, just wow.