No one is doing it like Ann Leckie! This sci-fi novel uses six different pronoun sets (actually kind of seven, except one is the same set just used culturally very differently by different groups of people). It’s fantastic. We’ve got they/them, e/em/eir, sie/hir, it/its, he/him, she/her, and she/her again except used as a universal pronoun regardless of gender (which works great inside the Radch Empire and badly outside of it). I'm on the fence about whether this book can be read as a stand alone, or if it would only really make sense after having read at the Imperial Radch trilogy and Providence. I suppose it depends on what level of baffling alien customs and politics you are willing to tolerate. This book opens with Enae attending hir grandmaman's funeral, only to learn that the seemingly wealthy old woman had sold her entire estate to a stranger before her death. For the first time in her life, Enae leaves home with a Foreign Affairs job: to see out a fugitive who left Presger space some 200 years prior. Enae isn't expecting to succeed, but sie gives it hir best shot- and in doing so completely upends the lives of a widening circle of bystanders including Reet, a man of unknown parentage, and Qven, a juvenile Presger. This book finally begins to explain this inhuman and terrifying species, and the reason why the Presger-Radachii Treaty defines the rules of so much of this universe. I deeply enjoyed this installment; it makes me want to go back and re-read the original trilogy.