My girlfriend really likes the Southern Reach trilogy and is thoroughly enjoying Nicholas Binge’s Ascension right now after I lent it to her, so I’m trying to find more books that fit this mold. Along the lines of “an expedition is sent into a mysterious/dangerous/shifting/alien landscape and has to survive when everything gets extremely fucked up.”
So far I’ve suggested Darwinia and Ringworld, but what are some others?
I’m not sure exactly how it would stand up as a stand-alone read, but book 4 of The Expanse series, Cibola Burn, is very much like this. Despite being in the middle of a long series it is pretty small scope, like a bottle/filler episode of a tv series.