Books like Hidden Empire

I was in the mood for a good space opera and this sounded good. It is the first book in a long series and there seemed to be plenty of good comments on itby well-known authors inside the cover. I rarely let such one line reccommendations influence me and now I remember why. Many of these reviwes describe the book as "richly detailed", others mentioning that the characters are "well drawn" or "complex". No one lied. It is richly detailed - the characters, the aliens, the planets, the spcaeships etc etc, is all richly detailed. Oh how I would love less detail!At first I figured it was just a poor attempt to help set up the reader in the begginning of the book. Here are some early passages to illustrate: "...Kori'nh had refitted his battleships as a matter of pride, painting sigils on their hulls, and adding dazzling illumination strips as primary markings. His warliners looked like ornate deep-sea creatures preparing for an outrageous mating display. The Solar Navy understood pagentry and spectacles far better than the humans did." "The Yreka run had been one of her company's most lucrative routes, since the outlying colonists needed many essentials that Rlinda could provide at low cost. Now, though, with Sorengaard preying upon helpless vessels, few traders would venture into the area. Rlinda could have gouged even higher prices from the needy colonists; instead she preferred take this risk...""The rest of the Hansa considered the Roamers to be little more than gypsy space trash, disorganized and disreputable. No one had an inkling of how much the clans actually had and how many taxes they avoided, since they kept such information from outsiders."Individually, these passages might be fine. They reek of exposition and are sometimes revealed to be the thoughts of the characters but no book is perfect and anyone could probably cite a few such passages in any book. In Hidden Empire though, these passages ARE the book. At some point it grew too annoying to bother with. In the interest of seeing whether all the exposition was just a temporary, first-half-of-the-first-book-of-a-long-series thing, I read a little from the end ofthe book and some from the next book in the series and realized that it never improves. Reading so much exposition saps the story of its inrigue, action and charm. It reads as though the author does not think you can figure things out on your own. It also hits you over the head with facts you don't care about. I'm more than a little shocked that this was published.