I quite enjoyed them, although a lot of people didn't. Possibly it's because they don't have any of the romance the Tortall books do - I find most of the romance in the Tortall books dissatisfying on some level.

They probably don't hold up very well on a "tolerance of other cultures" level, since Pierce is fond of having cultures be direct allegories of Earth cultures, and the second set of books has the characters travelling to other nations, some of which have some not-quite-human-rights-abiding practices.