Kind of wish my book club didn't fizzle out and die because I think this is the kind of book we should have been reading. a lot to talk about at least

I don't remember adding this to my kindle so I didn't know what the plot would be and definitely did not remember the... gimmick I guess? that it has. I think this might throw some people off but I felt like a) it was not too hard to figure out and I stopped noticing after a while and b) it has enough in depth concepts and characters that those are definitely the focus.

I will say I liked the premise which is why I assume I had originally added it to read! But it was very dense and took a while to get into (example: i read about 30/40% of it over a week and only by that point i was finally engaged into the story and read the rest in a day)

did not realize it was a series and I think that is why

Spoiler

i really did not like the end!! i really did NOT like that breq and seivarden end up as captain (and... first mate?) of yet another imperial ship. like....ok now the ship AI gets to be a captain herself but also like??? she spent all this time trying to just completely upset the truly terrible colonialist rule of this one dictator and then she's like.... ok the dictator made me her like adopted sibling or something so now i have to serve on her ship :/

it just felt like she ran out of momentum and felt weak and small and just accepted what was given to her. it was honestly really depressing to me!! i kind of thought seivarden was going to like, pull a big move and run off with her or they would escape together at the end so it just felt very off. then I found out there's like two (?) sequel books and that explains that I guess. maybe they run off at the beginning of book two. i'm not saying this seems out of character necessarily (i could buy that breq really did feel small and powerless in this moment and just went with it) but it felt opposite to the message of the book to just have them go back and serve in the military that was murdering innocents. though maybe I just interpreted the book in a different way than the author meant

so I'm not sure if I'll read the others. i did like the writing and thought the characters were compelling but. hmm. anyway it's more of a 3.5 stars than a 3 but rounding up to 4 seems off to me. oh well