I wouldn’t be worried about direct shipping, since Ascend does this for all of their speakers, and if anything does go wrong, they’ll remedy it.
I’ve owned the Sierra 2EX and Sierra RAAL towers, and loved them especially for the amazing treble and wide soundstage. And as shown by their measurements, they are overall just extremely good speakers. Keep in mind there are always pros and cons, of course.
Pros: Extremely good treble (smooth neutral treble that is neither recessed nor fatiguing, IMO as good or better than most much more expensive speakers aside from similarly priced Genelec and Neumann products), very impressive deep bass extension for a small/medium bookshelf speaker with this size woofer. Overall very wide dispersion which gives a very wide soundstage effect, if that’s what you like.
Cons: Deep bass extension from a small woofer still cannot defeat the laws of physics, which means it will bottom out if you try to play deep bass too loudly. They’re great for full range bass at medium/low volumes, but will need a subwoofer otherwise. No waveguide means the tweeter and woofer directivity integration/continuity isn’t as good as similarly priced designs from Genelec, Neumann, Revel, and others, which lack this issue.