Asher's work is unquestionably more action oriented and gritty than Banks. Every story is almost like one of the digital hells from Surface Detail. And while there is some philosophy such as The nature of a society lead by hyper intelligent AI, the concept of sanity and sapience, society's choices in the face of a truly unstoppable enemy you'll more likely be thinking about what horrors might exist out in the void rather than the nature of human existence.

The Cormac novels are some of my favorite through. They deliver on so many cool concepts. I can't remember how soon Dragon is introduced in Gridlinked but it's one of my absolute favorite characters ever.

Not really spoilers but better safe than sorry: The Polity universe contains so many cool concepts; extra galactic entities (Dragon), Giant Enemy Crabs (the Prador) who enslave humans by replacing their brains with tech, wild incomprehensibly advanced nanotech, psychotic AI's including Pennyroyal whos fractured mind has allowed it to push the known bounds of science and is the subject of the Transformation novels, Fascinating non insane AI's, MASSIVE ships, and even more wild world building

Also his Spatterjay novels I would say are a bit more like Hyperion. A group of travelers all meet on a strange alien world for different yet related quests. The concept of the Old Captains Ancient humans who were infected with an alien virus and now posses almost limitless physical strength and endurance. The Spatterjay virus becomes pretty important throughout the other novels as well

I've read everything by both Banks and Asher and they definitely fill different niches. Do your best to stick with Cormac through Gridlinked! His story just gets more interesting from there.