While the trilogy never quite recaptured the highs of Ancillary Justice, Mercy is a strong return to form after Sword's plodding middle. It winds down with a good balance of tense action scenes and philosophical/political maneuvering. Most of all, the world of the Radch remains committed to 1) destroying the tired sci-fi trope of one planet = one culture and 2) interrogating how we admit or deny the personhood of someone alien to our culture.

Breq is challenged more (though not as much as in Justice), emotionally, physically and mentally , while retaining her nurturing yet curt core. Unlike many fictional leaders, you see how she inspires loyalty with her relentless pursuit of compassion. She has never met a little guy she won't stand up for. And yet she conducts herself so strictly that you also cannot blame those around her for failing to understand her so often, and drawing so much on her generosity and support.

I have never seen an author explore how a hyper-attuned, hyper-capable AI would end up playing mother to the people in its charge. Stories like WALL-E also have humanity growing soft from coddling, yes, but Leckie's ships and stations must love their crew in silent ways that hide this fact behind a militant face. One of the strangest things to swallow in this book is how it feels half sci-fi political thriller and half slice-of-life from a kindergarten teacher. Officers (not just the young ones either, looking at you, Seivarden) require constant handling and medicating so that they play well with others and don't throw tantrums. On the one hand, showing that Seivarden still struggles to overcome her lifetime of aristocratic arrogance adds realism, but the unfortunate cost is that she remains mostly a liability. Her high point in my mind was definitely the heroics at the end of Sword.

While I continue to be unreasonably fond of Breq and Seivarden, my main delight in Mercy was the variety of new not-quite-humans drawn in to explore the quesiton of personhood. After Translator Dlique's abrupt end in Sword, I had marked Leckie's Translator-specific novel 'to read' because she was so clearly operating on a set of wildly different, fascinating set of morals, so I was thrilled when a new translator appeared. Sphene was another standout, both in concept and its acerbic wit, despite not really

having any bearing on the plot

. The inclusion of Sword-class ships, particularly Atagaris, with how Breq handled it in Sword, whose loyalties were in question were nail-biting tests of Breq's policy of

freeing the AIs

. I only wish they'd pushed the question further with Mercy of Kalr during that pivotal event, seeing as how its mere suggestion of being its own captain in the first pages provided the kindling for said policy.

Or by having a ship actually ally with the enemy, or decide it didn't want its inhabitants, or even just showing Breq losing the struggle with her principles when she let Tisarwat control the Sword of Gurat. Also, Sphene deserved to kill that Anaander Mianaai.

I can't not mention the pacing oddities either. The first quarter felt like the true ending of Sword, the middle felt like action leading into a climax, and the action in the beginning of the last quarter felt like it was gearing up to climactic, only to quiet down into very little on-page. 

Leckie should be praised for refusing to hand-hold  her readers (except perhaps a touch of preachiness on endings in the final chapter). However, here and there, she and her editors may have suffered from that over-familiarity with the text which blinds you to when you are not giving readers enough information. Conversations in this series are always dense and understated thanks to the Radchaai worship of propriety, but on a couple key occasions, I was left wanting. There is one talk between Breq, Mercy of Kalr, and Seivarden which I could tell was emotionally poignant but not exactly how, and I was also unclear on the mechanics of a treaty that proved crucial later.

I would love to read a series of short stories following Breq and the Mercy of Kalr (or watch them on TV). Like her crew, I couldn't help but grow comfortable spending time with her, even when the story was slow. Shout out to the lovely worldbuilding details tucked in that let me feel smart for noticing, like how so much of the ship naming conventions have to do with Radchaai gods.