Ancillary Sword

In the second Imperial Radch book, the scope both narrows and widens. Our narrator is sent to a small station orbiting a backwater planet, where she finds a wealth of problems to contend with. Despite the fact that the story takes place at the edge of the empire, it provides a microcosm of what everyone is going through. The empire has grown too large and leadership is starting to fracture. It's the fall of Rome, on a planetary scale, and it's fascinating to read.

This was a good mid-trilogy bridge. The story pivots from the quest for vengeance to something more sustainable, and adds some new wrinkles to everything. It was a lot more fun to read, now that I'm more accustomed to the author's style, but she has a lot of interesting things to say and a lot of interesting ways to say them. She might well become a must-read author for me.

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