I'm a well read grad student who's bluntly honest about all things, although I try to be most honest about myself.
There's just way too much Earth and humanity involved. It brings back memories of the old series, which wasn't good compared to this, and it makes me wish they'd move away from Earth: this series was so much more interesting, so much more complex, so much richer when it took place all on Cyberton without any humans.
The politics were somewhat the same, but always skewed to the different, and why not? Cyberton is not Earth, and there's a particular mythology they're playing to and with here. I found myself getting bored, and almost skimming the parts where it was humans talking. I didn't, because everything comes back in this series and More Than Meets the Eye.
But it was hard getting through that...