This is a good and enjoyable book. It's not high art, and the mechanics of the story telling and character development are too visible for my taste, but I read it to prepare for her next book, Hugo-nominated "A Closed and Common Orbit."

World-building in this book is good -- I feel like pieces of it could come alive and live in my brain all by themselves, with a little more work. It feels like a series of short stories. They're not perfectly strung together, but the lack of total continuity isn't used to imply progress or convey mystery. In this universe, everything can be known.

It felt like Chambers was working down a checklist as she wrote:
- describe the technology they use day-to-day in detail
- resolve all conflicts by the end of the book, and preferably by the end of the working day
- make sure to cover the inner life of each character -- there's always a reasonable explanation for why so-and-so is a jerk, and once we empathize with them -- FRIENDS!

This book's conflicts are struggles between the Lawful Good and Chaotic Good alignments.
This book's Netflix category would be: Empathy-Porn Buddy-Show in Space