I read this book for one of my book clubs, and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand: a lot of interesting ideas surrounding communication (especially non-verbal communication) as it relates to culture, the nature of sentience, and language. The worldbuilding was interesting, the characters were fun, especially the protagonist’s AI, who sometimes got her own POV chapters. On the other hand: very slow pacing and a lot of jargon. But my biggest issue comes down to how much suspension of disbelief I needed to expend with regards to the protagonist’s ability to speak apparently dozens of languages like a native, down to body language, and how a solid 90% of the problems in the book came down to cross-cultural misunderstandings in body language or idiom. While I am certainly the first person to want to fix misunderstandings when they come up, certain conflicts stem from more than just “oops, I didn’t realize that in your culture, going barefoot is considered vulgar.” Also, there’s a lot of stock put into how different cultures (ones invented for the book) express body language quite differently, whereas I’m not sure it’s that apparent in real-world cultures. Finally, I’ve made it through this entire review without actually touching on the ostensible main plot, i.e. whether a newly-discovered species of birdlike creatures are sentient. It’s important, but weirdly doesn’t feel anywhere near as important as everything else I brought up. Ultimately, I’m not sure I can recommend this book. It wasn’t the worst book I read all year (not by a long shot), but it was far from the best, either.