What a weird-ass book about weird-ass aliens. I managed not to cry at the end.

Who gets to decide your ethnicity, your nationality, your gender, your parentage, even your species? These issues come to a head when someone simply declares "I am human."

I'll admit that after Ancillary Justice, the next few books in the Radch universe seemed to get progressively dense and less interesting. But all that slow world-building comes together in this tight, well-plotted tale of three protagonists.

The metaphors for modern-day issues were obvious but they were so tightly intertwined it worked. It's also good to see a story without a hero, without an antihero, but with regular folks achieving heroic things through kindness and decency.