Consider Phlebas

The thing that strikes you straight away is the effortless was Iain creates the his universe. The scale is as large as anything I have read while the set up is as simple as a Hadley chase novel. The conflict may seem to be between the Idarians and the Culture but there are enough and more beings and players to keep you occupied. In the end, its this more than anything that makes you lose the trail a bit. And frankly, at the end of it I never really understood why they were all after the Mind.