Apart from the obvious toplists(John Scalzi,RKM,et al) , some of my favorites are:
Star Carrier Series by Ian Douglas ( Being a HUGE fan of transcendence (the after death kind) , loved it, awesome series )
Quantum Thief bu Hannu Rajaniemi(Mind=Blown, but its a lot of intellectual work to actually get into the story )
Mind Storm,Terminal point by KM Ruiz ( One of the few post-apocs i liked, strangely)
Never really liked Dune for some reason...found it a bit too..meandering..if that makes any sense -_-
Cheers!