When I read it, I had no access to the internet, and so I spent longer than I usually would wondering when this took place, in comparison to the Ancillary timeline. The answer came, eventually, but it did colour how I read the first part of the book, like a detective sniffing for time-specific cues. Since the book takes place outside the Radch, that was not easy, and when we were with the Radch in the other books, they were so obsessed with themselves, we got little mention of people outside their Empire.
Yet again, Leckie is doing interesting things with gender in this book, although they are not the main focus of what's going on. I am so glad she does this - if we're positing future worlds, why would we be content to let gender stay "the same," as though it has ever done so? (In this particular case, I speak as a historian of masculinity. Gendered meanings change.)
What is in the background seems to be a world where children are given the pronoun "they" until they decide they are ready to be adults, at which point, they seem to also pick whether they are a man, a woman, or a neman. If the third, the pronouns become e, em, eir. None of this is worthy of particular comment in the book, and the other systems the people of this planet (I've forgotten the name, but I'm terrible with names in books) deal with do not blink an eye.
The only time this really plays into the story is when the main character, Ingray, meets someone she had known for a long time who delayed choosing to move to adulthood, but finally did so in order to take on a job as a police officer, in the process becoming female. And, as part of that, regarded as sexually mature and ready for a relationship. (Again, I think. This is all background detail.) Pronouns are present, but not the story.
But what this book is really about (sorry, I meander) is family expectations, and it's about that in strange and rather wonderful ways. Ingray, you see, is one of two children (both adopted, I think, although it's possible she was adopted and her brother was not) of her mother, Something Aughskold, and on Ingray's planet, when a prominent politician chooses their official heir, the two become, it seems, legally the same person. It appears to be a way of shepherding power.
I'm going to digress. I'm very sorry, but I've just been reminded of something Ann Leckie is fucking good at and I want to draw attention to it. It is this: she is very, very good at thinking through a society and then how that society which is not ours would manifest in material culture, and how the physical objects around them, clothes, etc., all would reflect, subtly, aspects of that society. And shape society in their turn. It's so very well done that I would be surprised if a lot of people noticed it, but I did, and huge huge props for her flair for that particular aspect of science fiction world-building.
Okay, back to the story, I promise. Ingray's mother has brought her up valuing huge expansive gestures of proving your love and a place in the family. Ingray just knows her brother's going to be chosen as heir, so she makes a last-ditch crazy plan. (She's actually very good at planning and at keeping her cool in front of the press. Just not so much at adventuring, although she grows into it.) She is going to spring a neman named Pahlad from what is euphemistically called Compassionate Removal.
(I think. Oh goodness, I read this two weeks ago and all the specific terms are gone from my head. Whatever it's called, it's a delicately named Not Jail, to which criminals are sent and no one ever returns, but everyone chooses to think it's probably a verdant place where everyone stays out of each other's ways.)
E was accused of stealing eir's father's relics. Shit, there's another name for those too, but this society is obsessed with relics, including those of recent events, but old ones, pieces of anything that were present at an event are highly, highly valued. So she springs em, and e ends up not being quite the neman she was looking for - or is e?
Back on the planet, Ingray ends up both trying to maneuver her original scheme, and then negotiate a murder of a foreign dignitary - which some people would be more than willing to hang on Pahlad. There's also an ambassador from an entirely alien race around, trying to find the captain who ferried them to Ingray's homeworld.
Who's going to win the election, whether the neighbouring humans are going to invade, why the alien race wants that captain so badly, all were revealed, and were very satisfying, neatly threading the needle between too much and too little. I really love this world, and I really love everything I've read of Ann Leckie's so far.
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