I am a huge fan of Leckie's Ancillary books, the Imperial Radch trilogy, enough so that I decided to buy this book in hardback (a very rare indulgence; my shelf space is at a premium). This book introduces a new set of characters in a new human-inhabited system, Hwae. The main character is Ingrey, a young woman adopted into a politically important family who has devised a far-fetched scheme in order to impress her mother and secure a permanent inheritance. She has bought a prisoner's freedom from a high-security prison, in hopes that this person will be able to tell her the location of some high-level stolen antiques. Ingrey thought she had secured the person of Palad Budrakim, but when the former prisoner is recovered from cryostasis e claims to have no knowledge of Palad or the crimes e committed. And thus Ingrey's threadbare plan begins to unravel, leading her into the mesh of interwoven schemes around her- a stolen ship, a false identity, a murder and the beginning of an international incident of epic proportions.

I enjoyed this book, though as a stand-alone it didn't carry the same weight or reach the same scope as the previous trilogy. I also didn't think Ingrey was as strong or interesting character as Breq. However, what this new book does offer is a fascinatingly complex society which recognizes at least three genders, male, female and neman or neutral. The neman members of this society use e/em/eir pronouns which I found DELIGHTFUL- as they are the same pronouns I have been using for the past couple of years :D