Just finished consider phlebas... why do people like this series?

It wasn’t bad, just nothing special. People hype the culture series as one of the great recent sci fi works. It just seemed like typical summer reading. Definitely nothing on the level of the great sci fi people mention it with. Not even as good as Alastair Reynolds as far as modern sci fi either.

It was the first one he wrote so I can see him improving as a writer, but there was nothing special about his ideas either as far as I saw.

Am I missing something? Or is it the other books in the series that really blow people’s minds? I want to find more sci fi that’s good but I’ll probably just read the Dune series again.