I hadn't heard that this one was coming until it appeared, and it was a delightful surprise. To my mind Leckie is the greatest producer of space opera since Iain M. Banks. In some ways this book was the most like a Culture novel to date, but it's an injustice to discuss her work just by comparison.

The story, which cycles through three points of view, wrestles with the slippery, dynamic notions of boundaries, relationships, and identities. These three things are part and parcel of one another - you cannot have one without the others. We cannot systematise these things, but only live through them and work at them, rather than fix and determine them for good. The whole story is a process of grappling with that fact.

Most of the characters are pleasant and sympathetic. This is refreshing in a field which, to this reader at least, so often makes a virtue of cynicism. That's not to say they don't have their flaws, nor are they entirely unproblematic, but they are not out to wow you with how gritty and uncompromisingly grim they are.

Leckie is brilliant.