Ancillary Mercy (Imperial Radch Book 3)

“My life always seems hopeless when it’s been too long since I’ve eaten.”

Theoretically, when the Radchaai annexed a world, ethnic distinctions became irrelevant. Reality was messier.

Hardly anyone in the Undergarden wore gloves, it was just one more reason to believe the people who lived there were uncivilized, unsettlingly, perhaps even dangerously, foreign. Not Radchaai at all.

Annexation was the polite term for the Radchaai invasion and colonization of entire star systems.

I failed to see what was complicated about paying workers fairly, or providing them with the same basic rights and services due any citizen.