Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

"A ship's captain stood waiting there, an ancillary straight and still behind her.  Seeing it I felt a stab of envy.   I had once been what that ancillary was.  I never could  be that again."

See, this is what I'm talking about.   Breq had been part of a whole, and not only that, becoming an ancillary is not a voluntary decision.   And yet, she'd become so used to, so comfortable, as an ancillary, she can't imagine any other way of life.  

Before-ancillary-Breq died, and now she's... just Breq.   She can never go back to being before-ancillary-Breq, she can never go back to being an ancillary with hundreds of bodies, but in some way she wants to.   She may not feel that desperation, that loneliness, but she can't help her reaction when she's reminded of what she's lost. 

These sentences say so very much about Breq.  The reader knows what's going on, but this still makes me question what makes a person and if they can be whole and not-whole at the same time. 

Leckie does what she wanted to do with gender in the first book in other ways.   She focuses on it more now that her attention isn't split between the gender issues and this, too.   

Which is why I believe that it was a choice she made not to confront the gender issues head-on rather than being a matter of incompetence.   She can do  it, she just chose to do so in other way for some reason. 

I'm finding this book more enjoyable than the first, even.   Partly because the attention isn't so split, partly because there's more AI, and partly, as Familiar Diversions pointed out in my update about Medic that so many likable characters are introduced in this novel.