I read one of his later works and it was horrid, but Golden Age was incredible. The first several chapters were hard to get into, I quit several times and the people I loaned it to never got past that. But after that it takes off like a rocket. On a reread I found that the difficulty at first was just from so much being unfamiliar.

It's in a distant future with superintelligent AI, immortality, physical abundance and pervasive virtual reality. And in that setting he finds a deeply human tale of epic heroism.