I love Neal Asher’s books, found him a long time ago in one of those “year’s best” collections of short stories from the library (though the ones with fantasy and horror were always the best, I think I read every single collection for every year and found so many good writers that way.)
They are full of action, good characters and worlds and ideas, sweeping and huge settings. Feels almost more like watching a movie to read them.
Who among us likes these action packed stories?
The Quantum Magician and The Final Architecture are great space operas in my opinion. They both have really large stakes, a large number of factions and species with varying politics and exciting space combat. They are both incredibly different though.
I have to second The Final Architecture. Lots of action, lots of fleshed out alien species, a good solid crew to follow. It checks all the boxes.