Ah, as always, sorry this took so long. Still making my way through all these, although who knows if people even care about the answers at this point.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
The ending did feel abrupt! But I saw it as setting up the sequel. I can’t imagine that Three Grass isn’t going to feature in it? But I don’t even know what the sequel will be about. It’s been a while since I read Memory of Empire but she was returning to her home but there was still unease, right, some mystery power outside their border and capable of threatening the whole empire? So surely she’ll be back with the main Teixcalaan powers at some point. You don’t keep the POV character away from important Events. Unless they change the POV character…
I don’t remember so much from the first book, I’m going to have to reread it before the sequel comes out…all the way next year. It got delayed all the way from March 2020 to March 2021. 😡