Second paragraph of third chapter:

Across the gleaming, sterile expanse of her dojo-esque office chamber her assistant, Vincent Lee, braces on his feet. Lee is twenty-three, groomed and polished to CPB junior executive standards, and quite unaccustomed to delivering such bad news so early in the day.

One of the 2015 Clarke Award submissions which failed to grab us at the time, but I felt worth coming back to. It's a brisk action story of mercenary-turned-brothel-keeper Koko, who dscovers the hard way that her former friend and colleague is trying to have her killed, and teams up with an ex-cop who is facing up to his own end-of-life decisions to sort things out. Pacy and engaging, if not really my kind of thing in general. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2014. Next on that pile is Kaleidoscope, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios.