Structurally, it reads to me like the bastard child of a middle book and a fix-up novel. (I hadn't really thought of the latter until this moment, when you framed the book as a reframing book. The reframing was a matter of focus on short, discrete episodes, not quite self-contained short stories but close.) There are certain types of passes I am willing to grant those books, and did so in this case. I agree the ending isn't strong (though ending with a whimper rather than a bang was appropriate for the emotional arc and, again, something that you can get away with if it's not the end-end) and I wonder if maybe Leckie's going to be an author whose ending's aren't quite up to snuff. For me, the prior book failed to stick its landing in a more annoying way. It moved fairly abruptly from self-contained to set-up book, and Breq's distaste about working with Anaander Mianaai seemed to owe more to genre expectations than anything else.