Sci fi recommendations?

Desperate for some Novel recommendations

There are just so many potential novels and the more I look, the more I find and I feel really overwhelmed. Please help

What I want. Honestly just a good story.. It's very vague and I'm no certain what that means but something that's main hook isn't the ideas for philosophy but a normal story that will get me invested and maybe make me cry or something. Great characters please! Probably the most important part, if a novel can't hook me to the characters then I always struggle. Not every novel requires world building and lore, but would still love it, but please nothing generic (I'll name an example). Doesn't have to be THE most fast pased action packed novel, but still engaging. I did enjoy some slower paced novels like LOTR, Dune or the stormlight archive

What I loved:

HYPERION: The Hyperion cantos is probably my favourite piece of fiction. I don't want to rant too much about it because I want recommendations, but it was perfect: Within one book, Dan Simmons managed to create one of the biggest and richest Sci fi worlds ever that's still really mysterious and intriguing. Within one book, one of the deepest and most fleshed out cast of characters was created, easily good enough to be the MC on their own. Incredible history and lore, great action and engaging and an incredible ending with FoH. The scholars story made me sob and I would like emotional stories. Haven't read Endymion, will eventually but please don't recommend it

THE EXPANSE. mostly the same. LOVED the characters and world building. Loved the ending and didn't mind it getting sciency. Great action, fleet battles, politics. Also perfect

PHM and the Martian: Not normally that huge of a fan of comedy Sci fi, but damn both of these were great. Loved both MC's loved the science. Good examples of novels that didn't need great world building. Really inspirational too

Children of Time: The only one where characters weren't THAT great but it didn't matter because everything else was extraordinary. I still really loved Holsten and Lain's relationship and the ending did make me tear up. Loved the worldbuilding too and the evolution of the Spiders

Books I thought were OK:

Dune…. Didn't like the series.. Messiah was Ok but man couldn't make it past GEoD. I also thought the ending of the 1st novel was lacking. Very rushed, abrupt, too much happened off screen and so anticlimactic.
Loved the 1st 2/3. Incredible world building, lore and history. Loved the characters too. Loved the complex plot and political intrigue

Red Rising:
The only one I really loved was Golden Son… One of my flaws with red Rising is it feels like incredibly generic YA… The society and the 1st book literally felt like a hunger games copy.. I heard that the author was forced to do so to publish it so I understand
The second book was insane though. Incredible action scenes, Characters and insane twists all over the place. Loved the politics and plot, although I still don't like the world building
Morning star was decent… But the ending fell flat.. Darrows plan was stupid.. Hate fake deaths, hated the twist about his son. It just felt like it all ended too abruptly. The ending put a bad taste in my mouth and couldn't get into Iron Gold. Might reread in the future

Hated:
3 body problem:Tried twice, couldn't make it past page 150. In children of time the characters atleast felt human, these seem so flat that they almost don't seem human. Nothing interesting happened in those 150 pages

Sorry for the long text and thank you.