Truly less than a sum of its parts.

The book features two big plot threads - the continuation of the Mahit/Three Seagrass relationship and the threat of a devastating war. The dedication mentions Stanislav Petrov - a USSR officer who in American consciousness is known for preventing the nuclear war by refusing the order to fire. In reality, there hadn't been one: the sensors were deceiving them, which they had identified in time. This is extremely relevant to the other two narrators of the book, Nine Hibiscus and Eight Antidote, who are faced with an existential threat - aliens with technology exceeding humans'. They must combat the internal fleet politics and learn who benefits from each outcome.

Quite often I was distracted by the machinery of the story. "Aha, Three Seagrass is chosen to develop a complex linguistic system to communicate with aliens (even though she is more of a poet and politician than linguist), and she has no apprehension about being sent to an actual battlefield where people die in droves". "Aha, the situation at Lsel is so dire as to relieve Mahit of the necessity to decide whether she wants the empire or home". "Aha, this precocious child is curious and overhears many conversations providing important context to other stories" (oh how I loathe this trope. thankfully here it amounted to something in the end). This also made it hard to care for characters outside the 4 narrators, because the story very insistently told me I should, but I just didn't get enough screentime from them.

Also the chapter are structures in a very annoying way - jumping arbitrarily between the 4 narrators with only new lines as indicators.

Version of the story I would have enjoyed more would not involve Mahit and Three Seagrass.

General's friend should have been the communications officer tasked with the first contact - this way we could have gotten to know him better, and had a chance to explore the themes of maintaining cultural traditions in the face of assimilation from a new angle. A giant fleet, as a very heterogenous place, could have provided ample opportunity to introduce even more cultures and angles - so far, we only have 2 (two) on screen!
Mahit could have entered the scene after the shared mind hypothesis was proven.

Please understand correctly - I absolutely love the girls (and the sex scene was great). But all this could have been saved for another book and given more care there. The topic of romantic relationships on the edge of civilization (teixcalaanli and not) was already touched upon in the previous book with Yskander, and this one doesn't develop it that much further - of course, they spent only 3 days together while trying to figure out aliens. There simply isn't enough time for more!

TLDR: the book tried to tackle several very interesting, but disparate topics, and left me dissatisfied with every one.