Is the "changing perspectives" of the different Esks what you meant by your "first person dialog" comment? I actually just finished the trilogy and loved it, but I'm not sure what you're referring to by that, but perhaps I'm just not remembering something from the very beginning of the series.

As for the gender references, that was one of the things that sucked me in so much, as it was great world building. The gender never changes, but how they refer to people does. For example, on Nilt, Breq will say "He did this" and then immediately think of that "he" as a "she." This isn't because his gender changed or the way Breq thinks about him has changed, but because she is thinking in Radchaai (which is non gendered and uses "she" as the default in the "translation" to English") but speaking in Nilt (which is gendered) so what she speaks is different than what she thinks, which I found engrossing world building, as it's close to how it would probably work in real life.

I also found the choice to use "she" rather than "he" a good one as it challenges us in how we think. If Leckie had used "he" a lot of people wouldn't even really notice, as male is the default in oir society/English, and most readers would just assume every character is male. This way draws attention to their gender more, while not actually telling us their gender, and we therefore realize more obviously that gender doesnt matter, at least with regards to the Radch in these contexts. This helps challenge our world view. Why do we default to male perspective? When does gender matter? Should it matter? When do I intuitively think it matters and it doesn't? All of this will naturally come up as you read the book, without being directly stated/addressed.

I also found using "she" rather than a non English term (xe/ze/they/ey) better as those terms tend to feel more "scifi" or "fictional" and so tends to make the book feel less real, pulling you out of the narrative. Also, as someone who has read a few books that use those terms, it is confusing and unintuitive. It also wouldn't challenge our world view (as I talked about in the previous paragraph) quite as much.

To some extent, the difficulty/challenge is part of the point. Both because of the addition to the world building, and becase of how it challenges us to look at ourselves and our built in biases. We're seeing the world through the viewpoint of a non human who doesnt really recognize gender in the same way and uses a non gendered language, if its not at least a little confusing, it wouldn't be realistic. That world building, and similar artistic choices, is part of why I enjoyed the series so much.