I've learned with Weber that if I stick to the Honorverse (including the Worlds Of and the Torch novels) I'm generally OK. At least in a bad Honorverse story there's often a treecat doing something amusing to provide a saving grace.

The Dahak series was OK but the books were too long with too much filler. And IIRC they wandered into DEM territory at the end.

I barely finished the first Safehold book. And really, I think I basically skimmed the last 200 pages.