alias_sqbr

Have you not had stuff like that, where you went "wow this really feels like it was written by a man"?

Frankly? No. I want to know what it is that trips your alarms, so I can compare. There is one analogous situation I can think of, that actually gets closer to your original complaint (which is that Leckie is, scifi setting notwithstanding, essentially writing outside her culture): when I was reading David Mitchell's "number9dream" there was a specific issue that kept throwing me out of the story, which was that the POV character, who was Japanese, had next to no (or actually none, I can't remember now) references to Japanese popular culture or culture & history in general in his life and observations, merely Western/Anglophone ones. This was nothing like reading Camilleri or Krleža, say, whose characters really felt like they grew up where the books said they did: Sicily, Zagreb, wherever. The difference was, of course, that Camilleri and Krleža shared their characters' language and general background, whereas Mitchell did not. (I also remember asking other readers in my journal if this is bad writing on Mitchell's part or if young men in Japan really do distance themselves from their country's culture, but damned if I can find that post now.)

What I want to say is that yeah, I do have moments where I start doubting if the writer has any real clue about what their topic or character is supposed to be, but this tends to be more precise in origin than just a feeling. What in the Radch books pings you as off, exactly?