I finally managed to get through this book by listening to the audio version. 
 I liked that it mostly ungendered its characters (the language being spoken by the main character doesn't use gender identifiers so she(?) just used she.) This was great. 
 The main problem I had with it was the use of one of my least favorite tropes, "wait, no, I'm the real you." I also suffered through some of the many pages of philosophy, and had to be in the right mood to enjoy listening. The story isn't so much the plot, but Breq's creation of self.