What I liked:

- The worldbuilding
- The romance
- The Eight Antidote subplot. When I'd read "Interstellar Mail Fraud" somewhere on an interview, I'd set expectations on what it was going to be (once Eight Antidote starts asking questions), but I was pleasantly surprised at what it ended up becoming
- The foreshadowing was good. Swarm's character for example perfectly fits with his ending, and so do the various Shard Trick scenes (especially the ones where the Aliens keep singularly calling out the Pilots as "we").
- STARSHIPS MAKE THE SAME SOUND AS PURRING KITTENS. personal headcanon for all space operas.
- The 2 references I caught to Ancillary Justice. It is apparently a Holodrama
- The writing. I wish there was more poetry in this one, but it was still lovely nonetheless.

What I didn't like: 1. The scope of the Empire. Despite all the epigraphs that hint towards the Teixcalaan Empire being ginormous, there is very little in the actual bureaucracy that feels galactic scale. This is something that I kept feeling through the first book as well, but it exacerbates in the second. In the first book, for eg, it only takes them less than an hour to reach a barely populated town rife with unrest. From the center of the empire (Jewel of the World). In this one, there's tons of places where I couldn't suspend my disbelief:

- The Strategy meetings in the War Ministry. Barely 3-4 people present.
- Nine Hibiscus's authority. She wields so much power as a Yaotlek yet makes so few decisions on her own (most of her decisions are merely suggestions from Swarm/Reed/Mahit).
- All the scenes set in the bridge of the Weight of the World. So few people doing so many things. Maybe this was just because I came to this after reading [b:Dauntless|112292|Dauntless (The Lost Fleet, #1)|Jack Campbell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309198180l/112292.SY75.jpg|108122], which has a Admiral taking battle tactics much more seriously. Over here, we barely Nine Hibiscus take any battle calls.
- No presence of xeno-biologists or any sort of xeno-experts.

2. The whole Swarm-gets-left-behind subplot also felt weird. Surely, they could've left an escort? Or something of the sort?

3. The Lsel station politics. For some reason, Mahit acting in the best interest of the Stationers isn't able to convince anyone that she's literally saved everyone's lives. In my head, the Ambassador ought to hold the same political leverage as a Councillor. (How many Councillors are there?). Mahit running away from a unstated threat from Darj/Amnarbad doesn't make much sense to me, because she hasn't done anything wrong!

On a completely unrelated note, how old is Nineteen Adze?