While Ancillary Justice gave us a sense of the world-spanning scale of of the Radch, Ancillary Sword brings things down to a single system and explores both Radchaai culture and the consequences of having been "civilised" by the Radch. Colonialism and corruption both play a big part in this story, which manages to be utterly engrossing throughout.

The only gripe is that this is very much the middle book of a trilogy and several threads are set up which will not be resolved until the next installment. As a consequence, the ending didn't deliver quite as much as I had hoped.

That said, Ancillary Sword is an excellent second installment and I shall be reading Ancillary Mercy just as soon as I lay my hands on it.