Also any book by Gene Wolfe who was, before he passed a few years ago, the last great writer of English. Starters: The Complete Book of the New Sun: The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, The Citadel of the Autarch, The Urth of the New Sun (The Book of the New Sun) - Kindle edition
Litany of the Long Sun: Nightside the Long Sun and Lake of the Long Sun (Book of the Long Sun, Books 1 and 2)
Epiphany of the Long Sun: Calde of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun (Book of the Long Sun, Books 3 and 4)
On Blue's Waters (Book of the Short Sun, 1)
In Green's Jungles (Book of the Short Sun, Book 2)
Return to the Whorl (Book of the Short Sun, 3)
Also recommended to keep track of the worlds is Lexicon Urthus: A Dictionary for the Urth Cycle and Gate of Horn, Book of Silk: A Guide to Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun and The Book of the Short Sun
Hint: Time is recursive for the characters in this very long series by Wolfe. Each book can stand alone, but makes more sense when read together and complete - you may even want to re-read them again.
I read it, or at least the first third of it. Obvious knock-off/mash-up of several of Arthur C. Clarke's ideas, mostly from Childhood's End, a few other places within Clarke's body of work as well (like The Sentinel). Also one or two other "golden age" American SF writers, but mostly taken from Clarke.
I won't quite call it a rip-off, it's not that terrible. It contains details about life in China during the Cultural Revolution that are interesting and disturbing, no doubt about that.
Essentially he takes a few of the best ideas from SF's golden age in the west, focuses on a few tangential issues that were uncovered by those ideas, and develops them into a whole Dune-like story ecosystem.
My problem was that I kept seeing ideas and themes I recognized too well from their original sources, and found it annoying. I was a real enthusiastic reader of SF, Clarke in particular, as a teenager and pre-teen.