I accidentally happened across the series and couldn't put it down. It explores some of the densest philosophical implications of technology I can recall. Vast arenas, complex growing characters, implications in the concepts that don't hit you for weeks after reading it.

I was particularly struck by the concepts that came from the Atkins character, as the sole entity in the universe's military. The magnificent display of unbelievable power, not as planet cracking explosives, but weapons so precise that individual neurons could be severed from orbit, altering the course of entire conflicts. And the idea of the weaponry and strategy, though controlled by godlike machine minds, still needed the ok of a person to do the precision strike.

The only real weakness I felt was the Daphne character, she was flat, uninteresting and almost misogynistic in her treatment as an unbelievable ignorant and foolish female character. I found myself aggravated during her sections of the work, this stupid character in the midst of such magnificently crafted, almost baroque, prose and ideas.