Beat me to it on Reynolds's stuff- though it's worth noting that those books are very hard-sci-fi in style, whereas most space operas are not. Dunno what the OP's tastes are in that regard.
And, on that note, I'll throw in a recommendation for Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy: The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God (with a collection of short stories mostly peripheral to the plot though set in the same universe, called A Second Chance At Eden). In U.S. bookstores the three main novels are each split in half when sold in paperback, making six fairly thick books in total. In hardcover they're just the three though.
The same author also recently wrote a pair of novels set in a different universe, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. I read the first and enjoyed it a great deal, but haven't gotten the second yet because I'm waiting for the paperback one (I hate breaking up sets in the hardback/paperback sense).
