At the moment, there are plans to translate it into about ten different languages-including Hungarian, which doesn't use gendered pronouns, several Romance languages, which also gender nouns, and Japanese, which I don't know terribly much about but I gather doing the gender neutrality/ambiguity thing in Japanese is…

I never seriously considered inventing a pronoun. For one thing, I was working with the conceit that I was basically translating this story from Radchaai (or other languages when Breq speaks them) so it seemed best to use something that already existed. That said, gender neutral pronouns already exist in English and I…

I'd just like to add—although it didn't come across in the article, I mostly told the story to emphasize that my fears that I'd be asked to change the pronouns or lose any chance of selling the novel were unfounded. My agent proposed rethinking the pronouns it was in a totally reasonable way, but I was very anxious.…

Thanks, everybody! What good questions! I had fun.

Hi, SHutson! :D

I'm not as well-read, currently, as I wish I were. I do think more people should read Sofia Samatar's lovely "A Stranger in Olondria," which just came out this year. I know it's gotten some attention, but it could certainly use more!

Certainly any way you slice it, romantic/sexual or not, Seivarden feels very strongly about Breq. Probably understandably.

Thank you!

Thank you so much!

It's a trilogy. I wrote Ancillary Justice so that it could (I hoped) stand alone, but I also thought it could easily be three books.

Thank you so much!

Thank you!

I'm so glad you enjoyed the book! :D

You're right, using songs can be very risky! In fact, when I realized that One Esk would sing, I was really, really worried. I've seen music and songs used in stories, and while sometimes it works really well, often it doesn't. After thinking about it, I decided that at least for me, what really doesn't work is when…

I'm so glad you enjoyed the book!

Some of the characters predate my decision to use "she" as a default pronoun. And so they began with a binary gender assigned to them. Lt Awn is one of these, of course, she's so central to the story. She began with an assigned gender, but as I began to use "she" for everyone no matter the gender I had already…

This is a test. Also, I want a glow in the dark chia pet now.