If you want something short and easy, try Elder Race. It’s a novella, but very well done. The good thing about him is that he’s so prolific, there’s a lot to choose from.

So a game could release an “update” with less content and charge for it, and that would be ok to call a DLC, because they charged for it?

The Culture series by Iain M. Banks.

Not sure what it was. Maybe expectations were too high. Tried the first two books and they were fine, just didn’t really trigger anything in me that made me want to keep going.

Looking forward to trying this out as it’s a genre I haven’t really tried. But still not sure I get the reason to pre-order.