![]() We don’t know whether the soldiers dying having tits or testes, and we don’t know which the person who ordered those deaths has, either.* And I think this probably changes the way the reader reacts, at least in some instances. Why is this interesting? Well, we don’t know whether the leaders have boobs or balls. ![]() ![]() I don’t actually think we know whether Breq‘s body is female or male, hence my hesitance to use a pronoun (Breq would use ‘she’ and roll her eyes at me). Except for a few times when Breq is corrected, the reader actually has no idea whether the other characters presented are male or female. This, obviously, presents some rather intriguing aspects. And when Breq is thinking/speaking to the audience, rather than rendering pronouns as ‘it’, Leckie has opted for ‘she’. When Breq is dealing with cultures that do use gendered pronouns, there are language problems – troubling enough that it causes Breq quite some stress. Thus: the narrator of the story, Breq, is from a culture that does not use gendered pronouns. ![]() I debated leaving this ’til last, because it’s what a lot of other people are apparently fixated on… but for that very reason, it seemed disingenuous of me not to engage. So, let me get “the gender thing” out of the way first. I promise you will still have your breath stolen by many of the events in the book. There are some spoilers, but nothing too major. Firstly: OMG I loved this book so very much. ![]()
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