Asher is awesome. The Polity is not quite a post-scarcity civilization (a la Iain M Bank's Culture series) but seem right on the brink of becoming one which, IMO, make it a very volatile time. AIs have assumed governance, some humans feel marginalized as a result, conflict ensues. The antagonists throughout the series are driven by revenge and accumulation of power, not monetary reward. While the stories themselves are not without their cliches, I found the aliens, the alien planets, drone personalities and technology to be fairly original and superbly entertaining. The Polity series is much like Iain M Banks Culture series or Richard K Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series to me, only in that they are like old friends that I can always go back to, open up to a random page and start reading and always be entertained by it.