I came into this without having read the Imperial Radch trilogy. In fact, I was probably a third of the way through the book before I even noticed (by chance, poking around Goodreads for other purposes) that this was part of the Imperial Radch universe at all.
Good news, everyone! This works perfectly well as a standalone. Luckily.
There are three POV characters in this, each receiving about equal weight: Enae, left unmoored by the death of her grandmother, given a bit of make-work looking for a translator the alien Presgr lost track of two centuries before; Qven, a juvenile translator nearing adulthood; and Reet, an orphan with no knowledge of his past who has never quite fit in with everyone around him. No one expected Enae to succeed in her assignment, or even really try, but they gave it a sincere effort and found the missing translator’s offspring (Reet, of course - Leckie doesn’t try to hold the reader in suspense here). The Presgr translators want Reet back, but Reet (and his adoptive parents and friends) consider him human, thus triggering a diplomatic conflict.
Journeys of self discovery. High stakes negotiations. Cloak-and-dagger intrigues. Eshcer-esque landscapes. Cannibalism. This book has a lot going on, and I’m kind of amazed at how well it all managed to fit together. It’s both a very personal story and mind-bending science fiction.
As I said at the beginning here, this works as a standalone, no problem. But, that being said, I have the distinct feeling this would have had more *weight* if I’d read the Imperial Radch trilogy. I feel quite certain that there are crossover characters whom I would have recognized, and things like the Presgr and the Radch aren’t really given the introduction that I think they deserve - some degree of familiarity is assumed. So I give it four stars, but I feel like I might bump it up to five once I read the Imperial Radch trilogy. Which will be a high priority given how good this was.