Halfway through the second Becky Chambers book, the last of the Hugo novel nominees that I haven't read yet. It's a big drop in quality from her first one, I'm afraid. The Jane/Pepper half of the book is the best part, but even that feels padded out. Would've worked better as a 20-30 page flashback in a different book, or as a standalone novelette maybe. The Lovelace half of the book is just dull: "What does it mean to be sentient?" stuff that we've seen a million times, with no new insights.