Sci-fi/fantasy BOOK recommendations, please.
A few years ago, there was so much near-future, drug-using dystopia sci-fi that I lost my taste for it, and I have gone through a phase of just reading old, tried-and-true stuff like Isaac Asimov and Octavia Butler.
However, I hear that there is some REALLY good stuff right now that I should look at.
I enjoy other-world, other-culture, space opera, werewolf/vampire/magic/superpowers (not too heavy on the romance), feminist themes, to name a few. I have read pretty much every major sci-fi author from 1950-1980.
What's out there?
Oh, and I have tried "Good Reads" and "If You Like This" and they often came back with nothing, or something I tried but didn't like.
Last question: if you have read Samuel Delany, if you could, please recommend one of his books that is not "thick". I think I tried Dhalgren and it was too complicated.
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....read it just about all through. Then I xeroxed some of the first pages where, (you know bc you've seen it) it gives you a quick story synopsis and some author's history so you can find other short and long form stories by then. I think I picked 8 - 10 authors out. 
Near future. Earth's rotation is slowing down. ("Winter is coming.... but only to half of the globe!"
The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray
I ordered it, but haven't had time to start it yet.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Day-Andrew-Hunter-Murray/dp/1524745812
I'd highly recommend them to anyone who loves the genre.
...and I do believe it's time for me to re-read *Moon is a Harsh Mistress* again...
I’ve also been falling back onto rereading old favorites a lot the last few years. I think the election of the Orange One sent me into a bit of a depression and my brain didn’t/doesn’t much want to deal with new stimuli.
Know what you mean about the Mercy Thompson series. I think any long running series runs the risk of getting stale. Cherryh’s Foreigner series has gotten that way for me. I still buy and read each one, though. I think it’s the sunk cost fallacy at work. 
I also keep hoping the magic will come back.
Did you try the offshoot of the Thompson series called Alpha and Omega about the Marrok’s son Charles and his new mate? A slightly different take on the same world.
If I was forced to pick just one fave author, it would probably be Bujold. She’s never written anything that I DNFd. Almost everything she’s written is among my top list of favorite stories/series.
Jemisin just started a new fantasy series. I bounced off the first chapter and put it aside to try again later. That isn’t necessarily a critique of the work. It’s just part of what’s been happening to my reading recently.
Someone else mentioned Martha Wells and PC Hodgell. I heartily second those recs. Wells’ Murderbot series is a good space opera about a cranky AI robot who hacked its governor, doesn’t much like people and just wants to watch its serials but keeps getting sucked into dangerous situations trying to save/help the few humans it does like/trust. Her Raksura fantasy series explores the fascinating Three Worlds through the adventures of the shape-changing, scaled, flying, female dominant, bi-sexual Raksura. The world/society feels like a cross between the Lord of the Rings films and the bar scene from Star Wars - ancient relics of older civs and many strange intelligent species all over the place - except there are no human beings to be found in these stories.
Hodgell has been working on the same fantasy series, The Kencyrath Chronicles, since the 80s, and there’s only nine books! But I fell in love with the story and heroine in God Stalk when it first came out and have eagerly awaited each new book, no matter how long it took. I still have those first two paperbacks published in the 80s. (Most of the delay was that the first book didn’t make a splash and she toiled in obscurity, struggling to get each new book published. Baen picked her up a few years back and she’s suddenly much more productive.) The author has upped the pace recently, thankfully, releasing a new book every couple of years. I think the climax is coming soon, hopefully before Hodgell ‘retires’. The plot is hard to pare down, so try this link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ChroniclesOfTheKencyrath
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