I'm a librarian who loves anime, manga, and reading a wide variety of genres.
I risked getting to work late so that I could finish this. It was worth it.
This was...very Shakespearean. Which play? I won't say. But I now understand why Leckie chose the Strength and Patience of the Hill as the book's narrator. While I really enjoyed how everything came together in the end, I still feel like this took way too long to get going.
And yes, while this is set in a world that could (and from what I've heard, already does) contain lots of other stories, this is a standalone.