Well...Ancestral Night is a decent book. I cannot say better. It ticks all the boxes--a premise that facilitates galactic adventure (the Alcubierre-White drive) that she leverages in the plot, some decent characterization, and lesbian sexual tension that I think comes closer to what sexual aggression between women would be like than anything else I have read. But it was a long and kind of hard slog. Our protagonist (Haimey) has a complex history that is slowly revealed--she has been highly regulated with personality overlays. She is a true fan of galactic government and prosocial behavior in the form of the Synarche. She has an engineering mind that lends itself to hard SF.
You would think it would be nominated for the major awards with this kind of pedigree. But I'm not surprised it wasn't. It's good, but not quite good enough for that company. What is the lack? Editing, maybe? We are treated to a lot of semi-preachy soul searching from Haimey. And her nemesis, Zayna Farweather, is kind of a cartoon. Somewhat self-consciously so, since she is a pirate and they embrace the lifestyle almost to the point of saying "Arrr...". A major subplot is the tension and psychological combat of Haimey and Farweather, but Farweather is too much of a cutout and Haimey spends most of it talking to herself.
There's a lot of room for sequels--inscrutable aliens and codes written into the structure of the universe itself leave a good work space. But it is a work of competency more than anything. I am happy enough to have read it.
