Just starting book 9; it really keeps the quality high all the way. I'm more of a fantasy fan myself, but lately I've been finding a lot more sci-fi that is really high quality (this, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Vernor Vinge) than fantasy. The last fantasy book I read was The Scar by China Mieville (fairly steampunky actually) which was decent but not on their level, and before that some kinda meh book by Laurell K Hamilton.

I wouldn't really call it "hard magic" though.