At the moment I have read two of this series: Shards of Earth and Eyes of the Void. SOE won a lot of awards and was a jolly good read. One of the best hard SF novels I've read in a while. But EOTV is even better, I think.

The characters are brilliant. The world-building - especially the visualisation of other species and their different cultures or civilisations - is also brilliant. The invention of 'subspace' through which gigantic light-year leaps can be made works well... and it works well for another reason which I won't spoil by mentioning here. The plot is just convoluted enough without going over the top. And the action sequences...

Need I say more? I think there must be a third book planned. I will ask on Twitter to find out and maybe update this post later. But in any case, I strongly recommend these two Architect novels.