The theme of the series is basically how societal power dynamics play out on a multi-millennial timescale. The author called the series <i>Dune</i> after he noticed that, from above, sand dunes form a wave pattern over the land, so suddenly something he had only thought about at a local level had much greater meaning from this higher perspective of time. Anyway I thought it seemed up your alley. The first novel is a classic but it just scrathes the surface thematically.