If the way the colonists at Camelot deduce the Grendel life cycle—realizing the harmless-seeming “samlon” are the monstrous adults—hooked you, you’ll love how Children of Time builds an entire alien ecology from first principles. As the explorers in Tchaikovsky’s novel orbit and eventually meet a world shaped by a misfired terraforming experiment, the story leans into rigorous evolutionary logic and unsettling discoveries much like the methodical, science-forward problem solving on Avalon.

Remember Cadmann and the Avalon colonists’ frantic improvisations—rigging defenses around Camelot, rationing resources, and engineering traps to keep Grendels out of the lake? The Martian delivers that same pulse: one person, one hostile world, and a relentless stream of life-or-death problems solved with tools at hand. If you enjoyed the nuts-and-bolts ingenuity that kept Avalon alive, Mark Watney’s day-by-day fight on Mars will hit the same sweet spot.

If the suspense in The Legacy of Heorot came from puzzling out the Grendel—autopsies, metabolic quirks, and the shocking reveal of its developmental stages—The Andromeda Strain is that tension distilled. A specialized team confronts an extraterrestrial microbe in an underground lab, and every clue, test, and hypothesis ratchets the stakes higher, much like the colonists’ race to understand their predator before Camelot is overrun.

Part of the thrill in Avalon is watching soldiers, scientists, and leaders clash and cooperate—Cadmann’s blunt pragmatism versus the colony’s idealism—until everyone has to pull together to survive the Grendels. In Leviathan Wakes, Holden’s crew on the Rocinante and detective Miller form a similarly combustible ensemble, uniting against the protomolecule’s terrifying biology. If you liked Camelot’s committee rooms turning into war rooms, you’ll dig this crew’s frayed alliances forged in crisis.

Avalon’s lake felt real because the colonists had to earn every insight—sonar sweeps, field experiments, and fatal mistakes before they grasped what the Grendels were. A Darkling Sea gives you that same immersive field-science vibe beneath the ice of Ilmatar, where human researchers navigate a dangerous ocean, inquisitive native Ilmatarans, and rival aliens. The ethical dilemmas and meticulous sense of place echo the hard-won knowledge that kept Camelot alive.