I liked this one a lot better than the first one, but I also felt like I liked it because it backed away from some of the things that made the first one a better book.

To explain: with the first one, I felt that spending the entire book in one character's head, and having that character trapped between cultures in a way that she couldn't handle was more powerful as far as storytelling goes. (Even if it made me feel a little disconnected.) This book we get multiple points of view mainly from within the empire, and I felt like it watered down the feeling of how the empire was grinding over the rest of the universe. But at the same time, it made for a much more enjoyable and engaging read, because I like stories where lots of people from different points of view try to crack the same problem and save the day!

We have a fleet captain, the eleven-year-old heir to the empire, the ambassador from the first one, her maybe girlfriend the imperial envoy, and a handful of others, all trying to figure out a first contact situation with some aliens that mostly just want to eat everything in their path. I kind of called a bunch of the plot twists in advance, but overall, it was straight up MilSF first contact stuff, and I'm a sucker for "how do we talk to aliens?" stories.

As with the first one, I really wanted to see more of the cultures that existed both outside and under the thumb of the empire. We get a little bit more in this one, with a comic series a couple characters read, but it still left me a little cold. I get that the empire is everything was a meta point, but we had more characters in this one, and could've branched out a little. Maybe next time. (Though I don't see her scheduled to release another one in this series.)