Due to the previous book I am already invested in the characters so I trudged through this one. I enjoyed learning more about our hero(ine) the ship and her relationships. However, I did feel that I there was a too much time spent discussing oppression and the consequences of intervening or not intervening. ( )

This was OK, but nowhere near as good as Ancillary Justice, the first book in the trilogy. I’m hoping that the final book will get back up to that standard. This just felt a bit like ‘a sagging middle’.

This criticism aside, Leckie still does a really good of depicting a society where gender is disregarded and the language does not distinguish between genders. Leckie does this by referring to everyone as ‘she’ and it’s surprising how quickly you accept this. Although I thought that she had a difficulty when she started referring to someone’s ‘mother’ but never mentioning the person’s ‘father’, since Leckie would like us to assume that word does not exist.

I’m not sure that works, since presumably even in such a society there is a difference between the sperm provider and the individual who bears the child to term. Would ‘mother’ only be used for the latter, or for both? ( )

Not quite as good as the predecessor, [b:Ancillary Justice|17333324|Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1)|Ann Leckie|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1397215917s/17333324.jpg|24064628], but pretty close. If you haven't already read Ancillary Justice, then do so. If you have, then go ahead and read this one. I doubt you will be disappointed. ( )

The quoted reviews of the second of the trilogy bear testament to the continuation of a great space opera series. It is self evidently, but what strikes one more is that these are dramas of some sophistication about personality, class, manners. This is even more marked of course in 'Provenace', which came after the ‘Imperial Radch’ trilogy, but this middle book of the series demonstrates Leckie’s intelligence and skill, painting a picture on what could seem a familiar canvas in a new way. ( )

I enjoyed this one more than the first. ( )