Winter's Orbit

What I liked most about the book was the action scenes which were very well written as well as the world building and mystery plot. It was a very well plotted novel, the only issues I had were with the characters.
Initially it was pretty difficult to get past Jainan's personality and inner dialogue. He's obviously a product of 5 years of emotional and possibly even sexual abuse but over 300 pages of him jumping at each little thing or totally shutting down was frustrating. He shows no initiative to speak about his issues; he is very meek and nervous, but instead of voicing concerns or fighting for himself, he just shuts down. Nearly everything we learn about his past as the reader is from Kiem finding out from 3rd parties or guessing so not totally reliable. I personally have a hard time with empathy so instead of making the character more realistic and making me sympathize with him, I quickly got to the point that I wanted to tell him to go to therapy or get over it. Many of his issues, besides the physical from Taam which aren't known to the reader after 100s of pages in, seemed to stem simply from misunderstanding or assumptions or simply a lack of confidence on Jainan's part and that's really what made it so hard to understand.
I did start to like him more in the latter half of the book when his abuses weren't a big mystery and he started to get more comfortable around and with Kiem, plus his interactions with the other characters.
Kiem himself is a lot more straightforward and he was immensely patient and accommodating to Jainan with little to no feedback. When they finally do show intimacy, it seems almost like a Stockholm Syndrome reaction than genuine attraction and was pretty unexpected at that point.

Overall, a good study in world building and interesting scifi tech, but not really a book I'd recommend unless you have a very empathetic personality.