⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I was lucky enough to get an arc of this book awhile ago, and it sat on my Kindle just waiting. I regret that.
Why didn’t I just gobble it up, as I recommend you do? Because for some reason I had it in my head that this wasn’t set in Leckie’s Imperial Radch universe (“Ancillary Justice” and so on). I don’t know why I thought that it wasn’t, but it is.
And what a fine entry in the loosely connected series it is. It is a sort of missing person/mystery/why are aliens like that tale which is a lot of fun.
You don’t need to have read any of the previous books to appreciate this one, but you should because they’re great as well (in different ways).
I’m a sucker for a cozy mystery, and this novel is almost a cozy mystery (though it isn’t all that cozy… well, not in the way that I define cozy).
The main character is great, there’s lots of twisty science fictiony stuff, and some good old fashsioned disfunctional families thrown in for fun.
And you’d better bet there’s tea. Though it isn’t for everyone.
“Translation State” comes out on 6/6/23, and you should read it.