That wasn’t what I got. It was a very personal story, and I’m pretty happy with that.
Ancillary Sword is the second book in the Imperial Radch series. The first is Ancillary Justice, which I haven't read. Some reviewers have compared this series to the C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series because Leckie is all about the personal.
Ancillary Sword is a space opera, just not what some people might think a space opera should be. It was very personal, not far flung, and in some ways reminded me of Iain Banks' Matter (in his Culture series.)
Ancillary Sword made my mind stretch. And it’s not because of the dominate use of the feminine pronoun. (Dudes, I cut my teen SF reading teeth on Ursula K. Le Guin's gender bending stories.)
It made my mind stretch because the protagonist Breq is trying to live ethically and justly in an unethical and unjust world, and she’s not perfect but she does care about doing the right thing