I think parts of this book were too high concept for me; it took me a month to read this 400-or-so pager because I kept rereading bits of it in utter incomprehension.

The world Leckie has crafted is swarming with intrigue and culture, both of which are often revealed at the precise moment they're needed to parse what's going on in a particular scene. I have trouble "trusting" the author, having read some pretty terrible books in recent years, so I found myself frustrated often during this read, only to have my pre-emptive confusion untangled when time came. This book, I found, required more patience than I could often spare it.

And yet, I enjoyed it all the same, even if it gave me a bit of a headache. Breq is everything I love in a nonhuman protagonist (see: Murderbot), Seivarden's character growth is fun to watch in real time, and the world in and of itself is a beauty.