@matt very much still recommending this to everybody. it's kind of impossible to talk about the worldbuilding elements that make it so good without spoiling a very important reveal, but if you like worldbuilding, the worldbuilding _is_ the story. Read the trilogy as if it is one book, though. It's a 3-act structure and without the 3rd act it will not fully make sense.

@matt also Naomi Novik is a treat to support in the modern media environment. The first printing of the book had a pretty racially insensitive paragraph, which, when it was pointed out, she… apologized for, fixed, and added sensitivity readings to her process for future work. She's been an activist for fair use for a really long time. And she's on the Fediverse!

@glyph I'm pretty sure the audiobook version of the first book, which I bought just this year, still had the racially insensitive paragraph.

@matt aw, bummer. Maybe worth reaching out about at some point, since she's been shown to be amenable to actually fixing things? Probably not today though (per "on the Fediverse" she is apparently in the midst of a family emergency today)