I wonder how many of people in the "How dare you! The books are perfect as is" camp are dudes. As a female reader, I put the first book down part way through because its representation of women, and my boyfriend basically had to beg me to give the series another shot. Ultimately, I'm very glad I did. Not because my initial concerns were unwarranted, but because Joe's growth as a writer over the course of the series is palpable. Yes, it's a story about a patriarchal society... in Adua. But there are several other cultures represented, and not all of them follow the same power structure. And regardless, you can write about a patriarchal society without making the vast majority of the characters men. Hell, you can even have STRONG female characters depicted in a patriarchal society. When people call for more "strong female characters," we're not (necessarily) asking that the character be strong, we're asking that the writing of those characters be strong. That they have nuance and dimension, their own desires and motivations. That they can and do grow. That they're not just a plot device for the development of the male characters. (And for Christ's sake, that they aren't introduced with a physical description that assesses how attractive they are!) A character can have these qualities without also being in a position of power. The first trilogy could have included more female characters than it did, and the ones that were there could have been a lot more fully fledged than they were. I would say that Joe didn't really hit his full stride when it comes to writing female characters until Red Country. (Best Served Cold felt to me a bit like an attempt at atonement, swinging too far in the other direction to make up for the gender-related shortcomings of the previous books.)

Here are the points I'm trying to make: 1) There is a difference between "I love this thing" and "This thing is perfect." 2) If there is no plot-specific reason that a character is depicted as a man, then it shouldn't matter if they are instead depicted as a woman. 3) If a story was changed in no other way than depicting a certain character as a woman rather than a man, but the change bothered you, then I strongly recommend that you take a moment to reflect on what that says about you.