This book wasn't my favorite, but more in a "I thought it was bland way" than a "I thought it was bad" way. I'm not really into reading about political machinations and that was definitely the focus here. I guess I'm into more action-y takes on sci fi? Breq was also not a very interesting character to follow imo (she didn't have much of a personality in general), but honestly, I felt that way about most of the characters.

The worldbuilding around gender wasn't super interesting to me. There's multiple layers to it, but I'm familiar with all of the angles and I'd read different books that handled a lot of these aspects in ways I thought were better. It also bothered me that I think the takeaway that a lot of people got from the book (which is the takeaway the narrative supports)"wow, a cis man is being referred to with she/her pronouns, that's so weird" (which is not what is happening in world) instead of actually dealing with what a gender neutral society would look like in more detail. IDK, I suspect this will work a lot better for other people, but it didn't work for me.