Plenty of interesting stuff to glean from this read but you need to sift through a lot of superfluous info to get to it. The author is very enthusiastic in his research but maybe to the point he couldn’t bear to cut anything in editing! Also some pretty tenuous connections to NZ in some of the chapters.
Miyazawa is a fantastic writer of classic Japanese magical realism. He mixes folklore and fantasy with themes around humanity and the natural world. The Restaurant of Many Orders is my favourite from this collection. The stories are short but their eeriness lingers with you.
I’m nearly halfway through this final book in this trilogy and looking to order the other books from the Imperial Radch universe. Ancillary Mercy is a bit slower and more reflective than the earlier books so far, with a strong focus on questions of justice, identity, and power. Recommend this trilogy for fans of sci-fi who like a fantasy-lean and rich world building.