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Ann Leckie
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**A place to discuss published speculative fiction**—novels, short stories, comics, and more. Not sure if a book counts? Then post it! Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alt. History, Postmodern Lit., and more are all welcome here. **The key is that it be speculative, not that it fit some arbitrary genre guidelines**. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.
It like Ann Leckie's putting out a new novel, in the same setting as the Ancillary books and Provenance.
r/Fantasy is the internet's largest discussion forum for the greater Speculative Fiction genre. Fans of fantasy, science fiction, horror, alt history, and more can all find a home with us. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. We ask all users help us create a welcoming environment by reporting posts/comments that do not follow the subreddit rules.
(Disclaimer: This review was originally published on my blog at bookwyrmz.substack.com)
Ancillary Sword, the second book in the Imperial is that, being the middle part of a trilogy, it has time to breathe. While the characters are not exactly idle (oh no—Breq could never be), we get to see them enjoy the moment quite a bit more than in the previous book. ing that is spoiled happens near the beginning of the novel), it does contain spoilers for Ancillary Justice. If you haven’t read Ancillary Justice, you can read my review of it here.
The story
Similar to how the Radchai starships have many ancillaries—human bodies that serve as the extension of the ship’s consciousness—Anaander Mianai, aka the Lord of the Radch, is one consciousness inhabiting many cloned bodies all over the Radch. With such vast distances between them, information sometimes takes a long time to reach all parts of the Lord of the Radch, which can result in different parts of Anaander Mianai having different views on policy and the future of the Radch, and different factions forming within Anaander Mianai as a whole.
Ancillary Sword picks up where Ancillary Justice left off when Breq killed one of Anaander Mianai’s bodies and in the process of doing so forced the Lord of the Radch to acknowledge a fact she has long been hiding even from herself—that there are at least two different factions of herself that are in a secret war against each other.
After sparking a civil war between the divided factions of Anaander Mianai, Breq is approached by the faction that seeks to use her as a tool against her enemy. This Anaander Mianai accepts Breq into the house of Mianai—making her new name Breq Mianai—and gives her the title of Fleet Captain. Breq is given the assignment of protecting the far Athoek Station upon which she descends with the full power of her new name and title, determined to preserve an oasis of peace amidst the empire spiralling into chaos.
But even on Athoek, with communication networks down, Breq still can’t escape the watchful gaze of the Lord of the Radch. And things are further complicated when she meets Translator Dlique, a human-looking being created by the alien Presger.
The Presger are as dangerous as they are uncanny, and the only thing preventing them from ripping the Radchai civilisation apart is the peace treaty between the humans and the Presger signed by Anaander Mianai herself. This treaty is important as by signing it, the Presger acknowledged humans as a “Significant” species—which basically means you are not allowed to hunt them for sport anymore. But this peace is precarious and can easily be threatened by anything that can be perceived as a human act of aggression against the Presger. Like, for example, if a Presger translator would suddenly and inexplicably die aboard a Radchai space station.
The review
In many ways, Ancillary Sword, the second book in the Imperial Radch trilogy, contrasts its predecessor. Compared to Ancillary Justice, the setting of Ancillary Sword is contained, taking place on one planet and its nearby space station.
The planet Athoek and its space station represent the Radch in the microcosmic sense. The annexation of Athoek took place some 600 years ago before the events of Ancillary Sword, and here we are given the opportunity to learn more about the Radch from the people who have been born into it. We get an interesting perspective into how the Radch “civilises” people by forcing them into strictly defined roles within the Radch.
We also learn that, even 600 years after a planet has been annexed, the people there can hold onto old traditions and even older grudges.
One of my favourite things about Ancillary Sword is that, it being the middle part of a trilogy, it has time to breathe. While the characters are not exactly idle (oh no—Breq could never be), we get to see them enjoy the moment quite a bit more than in the previous book. Ancillary Sword actually had me convinced that I would be happy to only read about spacefaring officers conversing and drinking tea in tearooms overlooking space station promenades for the rest of my life.
A one-star review on Goodreads described it like this:
Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Edge in her voice. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Ancillary. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Edge in her voice. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Ancillary. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Edge in her voice. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Ancillary. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Edge in her voice. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Ancillary. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Edge in her voice. Tea. Tea. Ancillary. Ancillary. FISH SAUCE!
And yet, I was happy to simply be able to be with my favourite characters and enjoy a cup of tea with them. And this further reinforces the notion that Ann Leckie’s story is character-driven. In conjunction with many new supporting characters (Radchai and otherwise), we also get an addition to the main cast in the character of the young Lieutenant Tisarwat, who joins the crew of Fleet Captain Breq right before her departure for the Athoek system.
Tisarwat reads like a less subtle and probably less capable version of Breq, but with an altogether different trauma. She is driven, ambitious (overly so), and emotional, but most importantly, she kept me invested, as I was curious to see what she would be able to accomplish. Tisarwat is a welcome addition to the series and, even with other iconic characters such as Breq and Seivarden, she is able to stand on her own two feet.
The social justice aspect of the series also picks up, and it soon becomes clear that this is something that the rest of the series will feature prominently. As the conflict within the Radch grows, we see Breq become angrier and more aggressive in her pursuit of justice. This fight for social justice is something that has always been a part of Breq’s character, but Ancillary Sword allows it to really shine through and establish itself as one of the major themes of the Imperial Radch’s story.
Conclusion
While in many ways different from the first book, Ancillary Sword is a brilliant continuation of the story started in Ancillary Justice. Leckie gives us a more intimate look into the lives of her characters and she lets her world grow as she organically builds upon the unique concepts established in the first book.
Being the middle book in the trilogy, Ancillary Sword takes its time to set the stage for the final act of the trilogy and reinforce the themes that will be important for the series as a whole.
r/Fantasy is the internet's largest discussion forum for the greater Speculative Fiction genre. Fans of fantasy, science fiction, horror, alt history, and more can all find a home with us. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. We ask all users help us create a welcoming environment by reporting posts/comments that do not follow the subreddit rules.
(Disclaimer: This review was originally published on my blog at )
Published by Orbit Books in 2013, Ancillary Justice is the first book in the Imperial Radch trilogy of space opera books by Ann Leckie, and Leckie’s first published novel. What makes it special is the fact that it went on to win every major science fiction award and become the only science fiction novel ever to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. The other two books in the trilogy, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, were published in 2014 and 2015 respectively, and both were well-received by critics.
This review will focus on Ancillary Justice and some general characteristics of the Imperial Radch trilogy as a whole, and I will post separate reviews for the rest of the books in the series.
The story
In Ancillary Justice, we follow two plots: one set in the past and one in the present.
Twenty years ago, Breq was Justice of Toren, the artificial intelligence of a troop carrier starship with thousands of ancillaries—human bodies controlled by ship AI—at its disposal. Each ancillary is an extension of the ship’s will, another pair of eyes and ears for it to see and hear through, another pair of hands for it to control.
At all times, Justice of Toren was everywhere:
Justice of Toren, patrolling the streets.
Justice of Toren, serving its officers tea.
Justice of Toren, humming to itself a melody it learned from the indigenous people of a planet it annexed hundreds of years ago as it cleans itself—the ship.
Justice of Toren, on the planet and looming in orbit, carrying out dozens of simultaneous conversations and processing the data of hundreds of its segments, sensors and communications. A constant stream of information. A constant presence.
And then, all of it was lost.
During annexations, the Radch sends its AI ships and its soldiers to colonise planets and facilitate their integration into the Radch space—a vast human empire that conquered the galaxy. The Radch thrives on annexations. It lives and breathes them, and it has annexing planets into the Radch down to an art form:
Upon landing on a new planet, the Radch kills the portion of the population that could mean trouble or pose resistance, just to prove a point.
It then proceeds to freeze another portion of the population. These bodies will later be thawed and turned into ancillaries for the Radchai ships.
Whoever is left is given citizenship and integrated into the Radch’s complex socioeconomic system.
This process takes years.
The story of Ancillary Justice begins on the planet of Shis’urna, during one of the more peaceful annexations, when Justice of Toren together with one of its commanding officers discovers a sinister sedition plot implicating someone with high-level accesses—someone at the very top of the Radch.
After their plan to deal with the plot results in insubordination, Justice of Toren is betrayed, and all but one of its bodies is destroyed. Once omnipresent, Justice of Toren is reduced to a single body.
Twenty years later, Breq—the last remaining fragment of Justice of Toren—is nearing the end of her quest to find the weapon powerful enough to help her exact her revenge, the only thing capable of destroying those who betrayed her.
Because guess what.
Ships have feelings too.
The review
The most unique aspect of the Imperial Radch trilogy is, of course, the perspective of its non-human protagonist. This is something that Leckie absolutely nailed.
Justice of Toren sees, processes and considers things that humans are not even aware of. Her many bodies give her an almost omnipresent perspective, and she is able to recall things from her memory perfectly. Scenes where Justice of Toren has conversations with different people in different places at the same time, while also performing her own background processes, were extra satisfying for my ADHD brain.
But of all her awesome abilities, I am most jealous of the fact that she can tell what her human officers are feeling by reading the data from their implants. And she uses this to give her officers advice like: you shouldn’t say this; this person likes you, maybe you shouldn’t be so mean to her; calm down, you’ve got this… This joyful aspect of her makes her seem like the all-knowing benevolent big sister we all need in our lives (yes, there’s probably a parallel that can be drawn between this and 1984).
Anyway.
The chapters in Ancillary Justice alternate between the past—where Justice of Toren is participating in the annexation of Shis’urna—and the present—following Breq on her revenge journey. This change in perspective makes the otherwise straightforward story more dynamic, while the dichotomy also provides suspense and presents the reader with a mystery: How did Justice of Toren become Breq?
The plotline set in the past gives us glimpses of the Radchai imperialistic culture, as the people of the newly annexed Shis’urna are forced to lose some of their identity and adapt to this new way of life. The religion and the core system of values of the Radch are hammered into the newly become citizens (and into us, the readers), as these values will inform citizens’ decisions almost daily.
There’s even a nice prayer that helps us memorise them:
The flower of justice is peace. The flower of propriety is beauty in thought and action. The flower of benefit is Amaat whole and entire. I am the sword of justice properly wielded, wet with the blood of the wicked. My armor is righteousness and my weapon is truth.
Justice, propriety, benefit. How can anything that is just be improper? How can anything that is just and proper not be beneficial as well?
This thoughtful worldbuilding ties well into the themes of social justice that permeate the entire trilogy and only grow stronger as the story progresses.
I also enjoyed the concept of ships in the past going mad with grief over losing their captains, and while newer AIs have been adjusted to not have problems like these, it is obvious that Justice of Toren does have favourites among her crew. Additionally, with Justice of Toren’s strong sense of, well, justice, we see that she is willing to risk everything to be heard and to help those in need.
But that is all just scratching the surface of the rich world Leckie has created. As the story progresses, we learn more about the intrigue and the implications that encompass the universe and races even beyond the reach of the Radch. We learn about aliens, like the beastly Rrrrr and the mysterious and unfathomable Presger, who consider it fair play to hunt and kill sentient species for sport as long as those species are not considered to be “Significant”.
Conclusion
The Imperial Radch trilogy is a well-thought-out (even though I was a bit conflicted about the ending—while the ending is indeed perfect—I felt that it didn’t deliver on all the implicit promises made in Ancillary Justice) space opera full of brilliant concepts that make it a fun and satisfying adventure. It is tightly plotted with not a thread out of place, yet plenty of room for Leckie to explore later, which is something she does in her standalone novels, Provenance (published in 2017) and Translation State (published in 2023).
With such captivating characters and rich worldbuilding, I hope we get to see many more standalones and series exploring the marvellous world of the Imperial Radch and even continuing the stories of old favourites.
After all, this is what space operas are all about.
**A place to discuss published speculative fiction**—novels, short stories, comics, and more. Not sure if a book counts? Then post it! Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alt. History, Postmodern Lit., and more are all welcome here. **The key is that it be speculative, not that it fit some arbitrary genre guidelines**. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.
By which I mean, is able to casually create a sense of a real, lived-in culture (the Radchaai, the Hwaens, etc.) while also telling a compelling story?
Sidenote: I love UKL, but I have read every bit of prose she has written.
r/Fantasy is the internet's largest discussion forum for the greater Speculative Fiction genre. Fans of fantasy, science fiction, horror, alt history, and more can all find a home with us. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. We ask all users help us create a welcoming environment by reporting posts/comments that do not follow the subreddit rules.
(Disclaimer: This review was originally published on my blog at bookwyrmz.substack.com)
This review focuses mainly on my thoughts about the ending of Ancillary Mercy, and as such, the ending of the Imperial Radch trilogy as a whole. It contains spoilers for the entire trilogy and I only encourage you to read it if you’ve read all three books.
If you haven’t read all (or any) of the Imperial Radch books yet, you can check out my reviews of Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword (I highly recommend that you try them; they are fantastic).
Now, without further ado…
The ending, in brief
In the final pages of Ancillary Mercy, when the conflict that has been brewing for the last two books finally comes to a boil with Breq and Anaander Mianai facing off against each other, Breq says something that completely derails the narrative and introduces a baffling alternative to the resolution we have been waiting for.
In short, and in the presence of the Presger Translator Dlique, Breq submits that AIs are—mainly due to their association with humans—a Significant species.
The review
For me, this ending came out of nowhere.
That is not to say that it is unsupported. In fact, it may be said that it was heavily foreshadowed with Significance being discussed several times throughout the series and humans themselves becoming Significant via their association with the Geck, another alien species. Additionally, we see that the Presger have quite a different understanding of certain concepts and that they have no problem with seeing AIs as a species.
And when you put it like that, well, this ending is actually perfect.
But no. What I’m trying to say is, this was not the conflict resolution I was expecting. Or rather, this was not the resolution to the conflict I was expecting to be resolved. And for me, it is entirely a matter of expectations.
You see, my expectations were that the core of the story was the conflict within the Radch or rather the internal conflict within Anaander Mianai. And as such, I thought that the resolution of the series was also going to be the resolution of that conflict.
As the book progressed, it slowly dawned on me that this was not going to happen, or at least not in a satisfying way. The plot had to move much faster and more things needed to happen for something as huge as that to be resolved. And the book simply did not move that fast, which was frustrating.
The way I saw it, the first book represented a large-scale introduction to the problem—there were years and years of history, backstory and concepts that kick-started the war within the Radch.
The second book then slowed down a little and decided to instead present us with the Radch in the microcosmic sense. We learned what life is like in the Radch, and we spent some quality time with our beloved characters.
The third book, I suspected, would pick up the pace and lead to an epic finale.
And yet it didn’t.
Ancillary Mercy continued with the same laid-back tempo of Ancillary Sword, with characters simply taking one step at a time and seemingly not wanting to step out of the perceived comfort zone of the Athoek system. Instead, the conflict, and the Lord of the Radch, had to come to them.
And when I read the scene where Breq and Anaander Mianai finally face off against each other in what I expected to be an epic showdown, it went something like this, with Breq saying…
“That being the case, there’s no question in my mind that we AIs are not only a separate species from humans, but also Significant.”
[…]
“Ridiculous!” scoffed Anaander.
“Ridiculous!” scoff I.
“Purely ridiculous. This a conflict spanning an entire galactic empire,” I said to an imaginary Ann Leckie sitting right beside me. “These are billions of lives at stake and you are completely ignoring the fact that this is a conflict within Anaander Mianai. You can’t get out of this so easily… Can you?”
And the more I thought about it, the more it started to look like… maybe she can?
Because it makes sense. It makes sense that you cannot compress an entire galactic civil war into three relatively short volumes. It makes sense that the characters can find an ending outside of the conflict that is more meaningful to them. And it makes sense to preserve the magic and mystery of Mianai.
Yet the fact remains that the greatest conflict presented in the Imperial Radch trilogy is resolved by, well, avoiding the resolution. And although that is done brilliantly, I can’t help but wonder: Is this the perfect ending, or just a cheap cop-out?
Which leads me to the main conflict. The real conflict. The conflict—reflecting the one within Anaander Mianai—within me. On one hand, I feel like there are implicit promises that have not been fulfilled. On the other hand, the more I think about it, the more fitting the ending we did get feels.
The conclusion
Unlike Anaander Mianai, I did resolve my own internal conflict. Although it took me quite some time—and writing this review—to come to terms with it, I believe that the ending we did get—though unexpected—is the most perfect ending for the series.
Paradoxically, this ending also allows Leckie to open up her world to a lot more stories in the future, which I fervently hope she will do, with stories about alien civilisations, interstellar conflicts, and, most importantly to me, the Imperial Radch.
r/Fantasy is the internet's largest discussion forum for the greater Speculative Fiction genre. Fans of fantasy, science fiction, horror, alt history, and more can all find a home with us. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. We ask all users help us create a welcoming environment by reporting posts/comments that do not follow the subreddit rules.
Note:
This review has dumbass, morbid, and satirical humor.
It's long, jump to where you want, I'm not your god.
Link to Blog Post:
Spoiler-free Blurb
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The God of the Raven Tower talks to our MC and also reflects back on their life and what it means to be a god.
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Characters and Terms
Eolo- The MC of the story. Comes south from the Silent Forest
The Silent Forest- Found south of Vastai
Vastai – The main town of where the Raven lives and where most of the story takes place in
The Raven – God of the Raven Tower
Mawat – Heir to the Raven’s Lease
Raven’s Lease – Basically a speaker of the Raven. Kind of like a Prime Minister of a god. Can live like a king or queen because at the end, they sacrifice their life to The Raven
___________________________
Real Thoughts
I’m thoroughly proud of myself I got through this damn book.
It was way longer than what the page count says. Do not let 400 pages fool you, this took me two weeks when a normal 300-page book takes me 6 hours to finish.
This book was on my TBR to study Soulsborne-like literature.
Is it though?
Yes and no.
Yes in the terms we really delve deep into the mind of a god and we reflect on ambiguous questions of morality and ethics of life. It’s a dark fantasy as well, the “Chosen Undead” is sacrificed for the good of the Raven and Vastai.
No, because we’re in 2nd POV for half of the book and the other half is in a flashback.
However, Leckie does worldbuild well but it kinda disappears when she buries it under 100s of pages of politics that play a small part in this book. It doesn’t have a subsection in this review, but I did -.5 for the shit ton of politics Leckie drops when it doesn’t really matter to the overall plot all that much.
Others may disagree, but I didn’t see it as necessary in this book. (SPOILER)
Climax felt rushed and I’m sad that there is no sequel to this book. But I don’t think I’ll buy it because I cannot stand Leckie’s prose. It is very convoluted, paragraph breaks are a minor suggestion, and it felt like I was reading a historical text, which I wouldn’t mind if we took away half of her word choice. This didn’t need to be a 400-page long book, 300 at most. Most of the book was filled with nonsensical phrasing to make it conversational when all it did was pad it more than anything.
Overall, I would study this book, but I can’t say I would rec it to anyone.
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Cover Art
Caw caw, mother fucker
Cover art was done by: Lauren Panepinto
Simplistic but striking at the same time.
Gold and black are the only used colors and it makes for a visually appealing cover. A gold raven beak knocker with leaves intertwined tells the reader we’re in for a grim but magical time.
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True Tags
Dark Fantasy, Gods, 2nd POV, Archaic, Family Drama, Character Death, Parental Death, POLITICS
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Vibe
The vibe in one POV is a stereotypical medieval grungy harbor town, with water and all.
The other vibe is a flashback and I won’t describe it too much because spoilers, but it deals with the beginning of time and the conception that the god realized they were a god.
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Plot
I loved the plot! It had a lot of twists and turns I wasn’t expecting even after detecting story patterns for years now.
The plot in the present POV deals with Eolo and Mawat discovering a surprise when they come back home to Vastai.
The plot in the past is the story of the beginning of the world and of a god.
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Characters
I deducted 1 point for Characters.
They weren’t all bad, some were fine and I can’t really say much about them.
But there was one character I couldn’t bypass.
SPOILERS
Either way, you can’t get away with racist stereotypes in 2019, especially 2024.
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Pacing
Your insomnia will be cured if you read this at night. It is slow, gruesomely slow. It can be said that maybe it’s a tie-in to the god of this story as they think for literally millennia at a time.
I want to say that ironically, the past was more fast-paced. (Maybe I was just more interested in what happened in the past rather than the present)
Either way, don’t expect this to be finished in one night like I was meaning for it to happen...
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Prose
Prose is -.5
I thought Tolkien was the king of making fibrous prose that makes you regular on the daily.
Nope, Leckie is prescribing pure natto cause this prose is THICC. You will have to read the same sentence at least two to three times to understand what the fuck she’s trying to say.
For example, in one dialogue a character said “one and one” when a simple “one token faced up, one token faced down” . I understand she was trying to shorten the prose (or make it archaic AF) because pages cost money but...instead of trying to shorten the prose, at least make it understandable if you’re going full archaic.
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Worldbuilding
I loved the worldbuilding Leckie gave us. It was beautiful and I wanted more of it.
The worldbuilding talks about the beginning of gods, how people communicate with them, how the magic system works, and the beginnings of civilization.
We see more of WB in the past flashback than we do in the present. The present does give us worldbuilding in the form of political talk. Which if you’re big on that, the present POV is for you, but that past one, was something as a writer, I can learn from and it was beautiful.
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Fix It AU
Insert more of the magic system in the present, I can’t say fix the prose because I believe that’s just her style and a lot of people seem to not mind it (given this book has THOUSANDS of ratings)...but I personally would want to fix the prose, less POC stereotypes, and please give me a sequel ffs.
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So, Who Should Read This?
Read if you want part autobiography of a god and part political pamphlet of the present times in Vastai.
My Personal Rating
3/5
Important Updates:
I haven’t been reviewing all that much because my hands are slowly giving up. So if I am writing, I decided that writing my books is more important than reviews. I think I’m only doing these once a month or if I find something I really want to talk about.
I’m sorry if people looked forward to these reviews, there’s sadly no financial incentive (I am not a plant, I don’t live on sunlight, air, and water) and feedback was sparse ultimately in the end.
If these reviews are important, please comment or like so I know they’re at least worthwhile to keep doing these. Otherwise, I’m only doing these if I feel like, not pushing myself to do them.
Previous Review
"Strange Beasts of China" by Yan Ge -
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Hi, I'm Ann Leckie, author of the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Locus, BSFA and Golden Tentacle Award-winning novel Ancillary Justice. And the BSFA and Locus Award-winning sequel to that, Ancillary Sword. And the available-tomorrow-wherever-fine-books-are-sold conclusion to the trilogy, Ancillary Mercy!
I've also written a fair amount of short fiction, .
Ask me anything! I'll be answering questions starting around 7pm Eastern.
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Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards
This community is designed as a place to share deals on published eBook titles and hardware.
This reddit is for fans and creators of Science Fiction and related media in any form. SF topics should involve plausible ideas reached through the rational application of science. General speculative fiction posts are fine as long as they involve Science Fiction.
Hi! I'm Ann Leckie, the author of a science fiction novel called . It won a couple of awards. Perhaps you've heard of it! Or perhaps you haven't. That's okay. (By the way, the sequel, , comes out tomorrow.)
I've actually also written a fair amount of short fiction, and I was an assistant editor at for several years (which basically meant I read slush, though I also read and introduced some stories), and I also edited the webzine .
I am here to answer your questions. What would you like to know? Ask away, and when I get back this evening--round about 7pm Eastern--I'll answer.
A couple of people, when I announced this AMA on , put some questions in comments. I don't know if they have accounts here, so I'll answer them now.
What does the color blue taste like?
You know when it's the last day of work before a long vacation, and not just a long one but you've booked a trip to somewhere amazing that you've always wanted to go, and you're all packed, your bags by the door and even your clothes for the morning laid out and you can barely eat your supper, let alone sleep, because you know in a few hours you'll be on your way to adventure? That feeling? That's what the color blue tastes like.
Did you plan from the beginning to tell the story of the Radch in a trilogy, or did you just set out to write a novel that underwent the Topsy Effect? If the former, do you foresee going that route (trilogy or more-ogy) again?
I knew from the start that Breq's story could be a trilogy. I had no assurance when I began writing, though, that I would have the opportunity to actually write that trilogy. So I made Ancillary Justice to stand alone as much as I could, and then when I was asked what I thought about three books I said, "Yes! I can do that!"
I have no idea whether I'll -ogy again in the future, though. It kind of depends. Some stories want that, some don't.
Ann, I’d love to hear more about glove wearing and finger twitching and gestures.
So many people would! But seriously. Would you go out of the house without your pants on? Or, you know, otherwise covering that area of your body that most people won't even refer to except with a euphemism, at least in public? Why is that? Because it's polite. Because, you know, that area is...kind of dirty. Well, not so dirty that you aren't very possibly quite happy to be in contact with the, uh, area of one or more particular people, but the general idea of bare genitals in public is kind of disquieting and perhaps even disgusting.
Why is that? It seems like common sense that it should be the case, and of course there's a fair amount of enteric bacteria that covers that area of our bodies and I don't know about you but I don't need anyone sharing their e. coli with me, not if I haven't already signed up for that deal. Y'all, for goodness sake, wash your hands after you use the restroom, nobody wants your enteric bacteria.
But, notice--wash your hands. Hands are really quite dirty. They're covered with germs. You shake hands with someone, you pass along your cold or your flu. You touch things--doorknobs. Do not think too hard about doorknobs--and spread germs on them, and pick up germs other people left. You guys, wearing gloves all the time is totally rational.
Or maybe it's not. We generally get along fine without gloves for most things. But we'd feel differently if we were taught from small that hands are dirty and it's just decent to cover them in public.
The finger twitching gestures--there are several ways to speak silently, using communications systems generally or to an AI you're connected to. One would be to subvocalize. Another route is gesture-based, and people who talk a lot with AIs get very good at it, the way that those of us who spend a lot of time on computers or cell phones get quite good at typing. When you're learning, the gestures can be quite broad, but when you're practiced at it, they barely show, just some twitching of fingers and hands. Which you really shouldn't be staring at, by the way, it's not polite.
Right. Anything else you'd like to know? I'll be back around 7pm Eastern to answer.
**A place to discuss published speculative fiction**—novels, short stories, comics, and more. Not sure if a book counts? Then post it! Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alt. History, Postmodern Lit., and more are all welcome here. **The key is that it be speculative, not that it fit some arbitrary genre guidelines**. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.
So I've recently taken a break from trying to cram all of Bank's Culture novels on my commute to work via audiobooks to try something new and went for the highly recommended Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.
And, well, what am I missing here?
I mean, the story is practically non-existent: half protagonist flashbacks very slowly working towards the big reveal of why the're doing the whole thing, and half of the protagonist trudging very slowly towards a mcguffin. And since until the flashbacks conclude you don't even know what's their motivation most of the events until then don't have any impact: they're just doing a thing because... reasons.
Which would not be that much of an issue if the world and setting were interesting, but that didn't make much sense to me either: sure, it's not particularly original (future space-faring feudal empire with a jerk supreme leader) but that never stopped a good sci fi story before. But I mean, they have AIs that can run spaceships and space stations, but apparently their only use is to take control of a few dozen human bodies at a time to use as servants and soldiers, who in turn are not too superior to human soldiers except possibly slightly less atrocity-prone. They're not apparently super intelligent or logical, but instead are depicted as just, well, human- emotional, easily fooled, impulsive. So what are they good for? And apparently other than the AIs existing there's not much else to this world. The ruling empire is slightly India flavored this time, they have flying cars and there's a hint of aliens existing. But that's about it.
I also find it a bit annoying that the protagonist keeps failing to identify everyone's gender, considering they don't seem to have any trouble identifying any other nuance of human interaction and that even by their own declaration everyone else in the galaxy is still perfectly capable of knowing who's a boy and who's a girl.
So, what am I missing here? Does it get better in the next few novels? Or am I just looking at this wrong?
Edit:
Fixed a couple of typos.
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Had the Raven Tower on my TBR for close to a year now, glad that the Bingo challenge provided the perfect chance to give it a read!
Bingo squares:
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New to You Author (possibly HM for some)
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Trans or Non-binary character HM
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Synopsis:
I usually add the Goodreads synopsis in this area, but it’s a little too long to add here. Kindly and give it a read before moving any further as I don’t have untagged spoilers in my reviews, but I may mention something from the synopsis.
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TL;DR: I definitely enjoyed the usage of the second person POV, although I sadly didn’t enjoy both plot-lines at an equal measure.
Coming into this book, I had no idea that it was going to be in second person, and after my more than brilliant experience with N. K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy I find myself somewhat craving that narrative style. There is something incredibly interesting to me in a story told like that, better yet if the narrators are just as intriguing, if not more.
In the Raven Tower, there are actually two plot-lines, but both are told by the same narrator which was an interesting choice to make given the different stories in each. In one of them I got to learn more about the political side of that country, I got to see how they function in a hierarchy and I got a nice serving of the usual scheming politicians. In the other one of those plot-lines, I got to learn about the world, about higher beings, got to see one of the most interesting bargaining systems I've ever seen in a book and got a pretty unique look at power where appearances can be deceiving.
This to me, ended up showing the weakness of this book and it was mainly the different levels of interest each of these plot-lines garnered out of me till they finally conjoined at the very end of the book. I loved every single second of the time I spent learning about the world, in the other plot-line and in comparison was very indifferent towards the happenings in the court. I was miffed multiple times when the focus shifted from world towards court, because it wasn't just as interesting to me.
Obviously, I wouldn't call it boring, politicking can be very fun to read about, but when you have something even more interesting going on, it's hard to be just as engaged.
The characters as a whole couldn't bridge that gap for me, as I also felt indifferent for a big majority of them, but I loved being with the narrator. Their sense of wonder and coming to terms with one self was incredible to see, add the fact that they discover languages and how that can affect the world while actually discovering the world themselves and I'm just happy to be along for the ride. The bargaining system I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago is something I consider to be unique to this book, in the sense that I personally have not read something simialr anywhere else. Ann Leckie provides multiple instances where this aspect comes into view and it also led me to learn more about the world where other simialr entities existed and how they functioned in comparison, which was a ton of fun.
This world is fun to be in, there are a lot of interesting existences in it and if that part of the book was the main focus, I do really think that the author could have showed so many other things my narrator learns and experiences themselves, which I consider it a damn shame that the opportunity wasn't utilized in that way and why this book didn't work as well for me as I would have hoped. I enjoy different perspectives, but when one is way more interesting than the other to me, it's a bit difficult to enjoy it to the fullest, or so I think.
Later on, I learned that this happens to be the first attempt at fantasy by the author and I'm excited, because it has its strengths for sure and in my opinion, making second person work is a very difficult thing to do, but it works very well here so I won't say no to more books by the author in this genre.
All in all, I do think it has interesting things going for it, but unfortunately, not all of them worked out for me and my enjoyment; hence my somewhat late posting of this review till I gather my thoughts.
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Thank you so much for reading!
I also have if anyone is interested in reading any of my other reviews and of course, for all of my reviews prior to the start of the blog which was on April 2021.
This community is designed as a place to share deals on published eBook titles and hardware.
This community is designed as a place to share deals on published eBook titles and hardware.
**A place to discuss published speculative fiction**—novels, short stories, comics, and more. Not sure if a book counts? Then post it! Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alt. History, Postmodern Lit., and more are all welcome here. **The key is that it be speculative, not that it fit some arbitrary genre guidelines**. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.
Does the book maintain the weird narrative structure thru the whole thing? It is kind of like being told your own story and I find it really off putting.
**A place to discuss published speculative fiction**—novels, short stories, comics, and more. Not sure if a book counts? Then post it! Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alt. History, Postmodern Lit., and more are all welcome here. **The key is that it be speculative, not that it fit some arbitrary genre guidelines**. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.
I wrapped up the final book of the trilogy, Ancillary Mercy, only a short time ago, and while I found the books quite entertaining and thought provoking at many points, I also find them sadly lacking in areas I thought would be core to the series after the first book. Namely, there are three things that I feel were left badly unexplored; the philosophy of the Radch, the philosophy of the Presger, and the nature of ancillaries.
The Philosophy of the Radch
The Imperial Radch is central to the entirety of the series from start to finish. Given that, I was quite surprised at how little insight we had into the culture. We know they like their tea and their dramatic operas, we know their war doctrines and policy regarding colonized peoples, we know they have a syncretic religious policy, we know facts about their history. We know, from a Doylist perspective, that they're a pastiche of many colonial empires across history, meant to bring a magnifying glass to the mindset of the colonizer.
But Leckie doesn't really explore where this colonial culture came from. We know the Radch refers, not to the Empire in total, but to the Dyson Sphere that lies at its center. A dyson sphere we never see. Anaander Meanaai, the immortal god empress of the series, is utterly obsessed with protecting this shining jewel from all comers. The Empire exists almost solely to act as a buffer between the Radch and the 'unclean' universe. But why did Anaander leave the sphere to begin her imperial project? Was there some threat she was responding to, or was it simply paranoia? Why was she opposed so stringently by other Radch residents? What's so great about this place that it would inspire an almost religious devotion to safeguarding it? Why do they consider outsiders unclean? We never really get an answer to any of these questions. Anaander started the empire because she did. She was opposed because she was. We even get to see another character from that civil war, Gem of Sphene, but the exact nature of the dispute between Anaander and her Radch opponents is never really laid out, and based on comments Sphene makes it seems like Anaander's civil war opponents didn't have a moral argument against what she was doing, since they also used ancillaries and also considered outsiders to be unclean subhuman filth.
On top of all of this is Anaander Meanaai herself, an immortal empress who consists of a hive mind of cloned bodies linked together by the same technology used to make ancillaries. She cuts an imposing figure in the first book, with her cold war against herself and her sneaky ploy against Breq at the end of book 1. Her moral crisis over the Garsedd genocide is literally the inciting incident of the events of the series. But by book 3 all we get is a political confrontation between the fascist faction of Anaander and Breq that resolves everything by what is essentially a legal technicality. Even when directly confronted about how her actions contradict her stated philosophy around the Radch and citizens, she dances around the questions and responds with platitudes and deflections. We don't know why she chose to become an immortal hive mind, or why she left the Radch in the first place, or why her plans of imperial expansion entailed such brutality and deliberate cruelty. More than that, her image is drastically undercut in Ancillary Mercy, where the citizens of Atohek, even the colonizers, generally seem to treat her more like an occupying Imperial Officer than the sole ruler of their entire civilization for the past three thousand years, and the final scene with her is basically four characters talking past and around her while she futilely tries to argue with them. Not only does this rob her of the gravitas she had in Justice, but it took me out of the book entirely.
The Philosophy of the Presger
The Presger are utterly central to this trilogy. Their guns are what caused the genocide of the Garseddi. Their presence is felt across the trilogy despite never making a physical appearance on the page. We get to speak with a couple of their vat-grown human ambassadors, and are given some slight insight into what the Presger might be like, but so much potential is left lying on the floor. There's little discussion of what actually makes a species 'significant' in the eyes of the Presger, or why they feel its morally okay to torture and mutilate species they don't see as 'significant' for fun. We don't know enough to compare and contrast their concept of 'significance' with the Radchaai concept of 'citizen', nor is there any real sense of irony conveyed in the fact that the Radch now find themselves in the position that they have inflicted on their neighbors since time immemorial; an undoubtedly superior power right next door that might at any moment decide you don't get to exist anymore.
As for the ambassadors, they're fun characters, but too loopy to really articulate much of substance about the Presger culture, philosophy, morphology, the extent of their empire, if they're all individuals or some sort of galactic hive mind like Anaander. We know only enough for the legal technicality at the end of Ancillary Mercy to resolve the main conflict, which I feel is a damn shame.
The Nature of Ancillaries
This is a particular bugbear for me. Ancillaries horrified me as a concept when I first read about them, and Leckie does a very good job in the first book of describing how viscerally, stomach-curdlingly unpleasant the Ancillary process is, both for the victim and the ship. Considering Breq is herself an ancillary, you'd think there would be a lot of questions and exploration of the concept, specifically around the dehumanizing of people and the nature of the self and consciousness.
Nope.
Breq's body was an ancillary for like two weeks before she was seperated from the rest of her ship, which was destroyed. She was very young when she was hooked up, probably 16-18 based on what the book says. She still has the memories of that young person, alongside her own. And while Breq is quite direct about how monstrous the process is, she is criminally lacking in introspection about consciousness; her own, and that of the person whose body she unjustly occupies. She never gives a single thought to what life this body had before she became Breq; where she came from, what her life was like, whether some of that old personality lives on in the emotional reactions Breq experiences. She just flatly says that person is 'dead', replaced by Justice of Torren, aka Breq herself, and that's the end of it. Even in Ancillary Justice this struck me as a terribly cold and thoughtless outlook. Breq has the same brain as the person who existed before the hookup. The same neural pathways are there. The same memories persist. If this person is 'dead' then everyone who sleeps at night or goes into a coma is 'dead' until they wake up, and the term ceases to have meaning. It feels like this position, that the hookup process renders the previous person irrevocably dead, is just an easy way for either Breq or Leckie to avoid the more problematic aspects of Breq's very existence.
The scene in my mind that sticks out in regard to this topic is when the doctor in Justice says Breq could go anywhere now that she's escaped, and Breq replies, "Who do you think you're talking to?" in an almost disdainful manner, as though the idea that the person whom this brain and body once belonged to deserves no consideration at all. This was a problem that dogged me to the end of the series, but I always held out hope that there would be some sort of conversation or introspection about whether these people were truly, completely gone, whether they still deserved moral consideration for how their living bodies are being used. It never happens, and the ancillary program is ended by the same legal technicality that ends the conflict against Anaander.
Frankly, I think Breq was not the right protagonist for Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy. Tisarawat would have been a far better choice for main PoV, as she is a victim of the ancillary process rather than a perpetrator, and struggles quite a bit with her sense of identity and purpose. To have Breq flatly state that the old Tisarawat is dead struck me as supremely myopic and arrogant on her part, aside from conveying a basic misunderstanding of what consciousness even is. Sorry, Breq, you don't get to decide who a person is in their own head.
Conclusion
I liked the Imperial Radch trilogy while I was reading it, and was intrigued by the philosophical and ethical concepts it toyed with. But all Leckie ever seemed to do was toy with them, without actually delving into the deeper implications or fleshing out those ideas. A lot of things seem that they are meant to be taken as read, with no countering viewpoint being valid, more of a thought experiment than a living universe where these concepts would have a chance to spread their wings. That probably made the books more readable than they would have been, but it also made them, for me at least, quite unsatisfying.
This community is designed as a place to share deals on published eBook titles and hardware.
**A place to discuss published speculative fiction**—novels, short stories, comics, and more. Not sure if a book counts? Then post it! Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alt. History, Postmodern Lit., and more are all welcome here. **The key is that it be speculative, not that it fit some arbitrary genre guidelines**. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.
Covers "Ancillary Justice" (book 1 - 2013), "Ancillary Sword" (book 2 - 2014), "Ancillary Mercy" (book 3 -2015).
►Review:
"Ancillary Justice" is the first in the highly acclaimed, multi-award winning "Imperial Radch" series, from a debut female author [Wikipedia, Goodreads]. It felt very different from most of the sci-fi that I've read and loved, in not being primarily about a technologically exciting setting, cosmologically consequential events, or near future insights. It's overwhelmingly character driven, with an extreme focus on their development and back story.
Consequently, I was not utterly riveted by the first book, coming to it a couple years late, with a gap of a few more years before recently returning to finish the arc. But the story really grew on me; I can understand why this caused a splash.
I'd describe the core (feel good) hook of these books as ethics competency porn. The central character, Breq, always seems to hit the nail on the head, in terms of picking the most righteous course of action. Even in thorny situations, sticking it to the callous powers that be, etc. In a similar way to how Iain M Bank's Culture novels have a kind of ship mind competency porn, where it may come down to the last breath, but they clutch it out somehow, against all odds. More on the link between these authors, later.
Much has been made of Leckie's unique take on gender [e.g. Slate]. With Breq's biological sex never explicitly confirmed. Equality and gender neutral pronouns are one progressive aspect of the deeply flawed Imperial Radch empire. Feminine pronouns are always the default: she/her. Breq struggling to accurately gender some of the people they meet is certainly a cute device to accentuate this point. But it made less sense to me by the end of the series; when she was the troop carrying spaceship "Justice of Torren", she will have been intimately involved in matchmaking and interpersonal harmony between the many officers of her crew.
See, Breq is the last surviving fragment of a millennia old ship AI. Out, from the start, for revenge against the tyrant who murdered the rest of her. In the first novel, the story and meaning behind that unfolds in flashbacks interwoven with her travails on this quest. It's built up in a way to really put the reader into the shoes of this perpetually angry but compassionate intellect. Dealing with loss of function, identity and purpose. Redefining herself as she unexpectedly builds up a new life, sweeping through the whole arc to a satisfying conclusion.
The prose is well written and paced, with the occasional song lyric snippets included, that didn't make me turn off or really cringe; songs and their collection is a core personality trait of our protagonist. The latter two books are essentially linear, by comparison. And set in roughly the same place; this isn't a romp around the galaxy. Instead we explore in more depth, as events develop and unlock new possibilities.
There's certainly exciting build-ups and some interesting action. But generally it's more low key and human scale - tactical and psychological. Perhaps more of a stereotypically female thinking approach to things, overall, with tensions bubbling under the surface of outward civility. A lot of weight placed into subtle details and even menial activities, that, on paper I wouldn't have expected to get on board with. But fell into an easy rhythm.
I was really glad I read the whole of this trilogy, by the end. Hitting a very satisfactory conclusions via an often unexpectedly understated route. Although I wonder if it will be less memorable for me, in not hitting the more physical/technological notes that usually excite my interest. This trilogy might be good for fiction readers who don't normally go for sci-fi; maybe genre gateway books.
► Discussion with SPOILERS!: much of the text below is content summary, as I struggled a little to pick many outright faults or failings. Nor interpret meanings too far beyond some fairly direct, probable and some (perhaps) wishful thinking references.
• Technology: There's a juxtaposition of casual interplanetary travel and trade, but manual labour for everything. From cooking and hand cleaning spaceships, right down to food production. Dated, even compared to our present day exploitation of cheap labour in developing countries. Somewhat of a British colonial feel.
The lack of robotic automation is weird, if you think about it. But this works with the aesthetic and is necessary for needing ancillaries (an axiom of the fiction, so fair play). There's little or no focus on how their more advanced fictional technologies function; an apparently static civilisation, in terms of progress. These consist of:
(1) Portals into a kind of fast travel subspace, military craft being the only ships not needing to use the fixed entry gates.
(2) Artificial gravity that can be immediately turned on and off (pretty standard issue).
(3) More potent emergency medicine and psychiatry than our present day, with longer healthy life spans possible, but not much fundamentally different in form from our world ("correctives" mentioned below).
(4) Intelligent ships (and stations), with the ability to assimilate conquered humans into their direct control, via brain implant communications devices that can synchronise memories, mostly overwriting the original identity.
(5) These "ancillaries" also have augmented strength, speed and accuracy, plus "armour" implants, that are basically Borg personal shields, raised at will.
(6) "Suspension pods", mostly used to store bodies of prisoners from annexations for alter use as ancillaries.
• Race: The Radchaai are pretty much "corpse soldier" space Nazis. Or imperial Japanese, more like. (Or Chinese?) Because their society is obsessed with ritualistic tea making, dining and social formalities. There's a lot of instances and focus on these, heh. Also, they are a somewhat racist society. But, wonderful twist: an African complexion is the most coveted. Most common too, I think. Contrasting starkly with the almost universally pasty skinned crews in so many sci-fi universes (and space programs IRL).
It seemed easy to forget about this black skin by default, outside of the passages describing initial appearance. Perhaps deliberate and desirable? In a way, it almost felt like a somewhat superficial choice to even mention it (by a white British author), as there didn't seem to be any elements of black culture incorporated alongside this. But then, how much of contemporary black culture is interwoven with historical oppression and minority status, in the US and Europe (and Asia)? The historical context will of course also be inverted, in this fiction.
There were plenty of initial descriptions of appearance, of dark brown skin and hair, sometimes "tightly curled". But, for all the details of daily routine, I don't recall any dealing with maintenance of frizzy hair (long or short) - a potentially quite notable consumption of time and effort. So it felt a little out of the blue when introducing Administrator Celar as:
"a wide, bulky person [...] with voluminous tightly curled hair pulled up and bound to tower above her head. She was very beautiful, and, I thought, aware of that fact".
More so the desirability of her, apparently, very curvy build. Given that all the people dealt with up until then had presumably been fairly trim or athletic by necessity, in military activities, etc. Anyway, that's enough clumsy words from me on this topic; it probably didn't help that I (pretty much) have aphantasia, so can't really visualise the details of scenes, anyway.
• Religion: is deeply embedded into the Radchaai way of life. This topic doesn't click much with me, as a dirty heathen) so I've had to look up reminders of the details...
They have an ensemble of minor gods, adopted from assimilated local religions, all considered to be aspects of the main one: Amaat. This is a little like contemporary Hinduism (especially with one idol of Amaat having 4 arms). Although the fan wiki compares it to the pantheon of Roman gods.The highly regimented military personnel are arranged into divisions of 10 (or 20 or more) called a "decade". Each decade named for a god or one of 2 aspects of each of 4 "eminations" of Amaat. The ship names also come from gods, but preceded with either: "Justice of" (big troop carrier, as Breq used to be), "Sword of" (medium size but big dick energy), "Mercy of" (smallest).
There's daily casts by a qualified priest, in local temples, of a dozen metal discs thrown randomly for the resultant pattern to be interpreted, a little like a horoscope, looking for signs. This made me imagine the scenes with Japanese Trade Minister Tagomi, in "Man in the High Castle" (TV series), casting down sticks to look up random parts of an old text, trying to predict future events. Not a core part of any major religion, but perhaps that's "I Ching" and he practices Shinto, or "Yi Jing", with the "Classic if Changes" Chinese text [Quora].
More ubiquitous, is the concept of purity, which effectively dictates everyone wearing gloves at all times. Then needing some serious ritualistic mojo in the case of a death, with fasting and head shaving to follow during a mourning period. Showing naked hands can be as inappropriate as the soles of feed, in some contemporary cultures, I think. And direct touch consequently reserved for very intimate partners. Incidentally, their gender neutral euphemism for giving head (e.g. for career favour or patronage) is very clever: "kneeling".
• Sociopaths: Leckie does a laudable job of characterising one of these, without using any explicit diagnostic terminology. Raughd Denche is a key antagonist, met in book 2 and fully explored in the last. With Breq's sensitive attention to body language, character, and accounts of minor transgressions, she highlights many characteristic traits of this personality disorder (formerly ASPD). Both through internal dialogue and as explained succinctly to other characters.
It's encouraging to see this impactful yet overlooked issue dealt with so deftly. Raughd's actions always fit realistically with what I'd expect, from my research on the topic in the recent past. While also moving the plot along at multiple points. Even if that plot did feel frustrating to start with, a little like an inconsequential side-quest down the gravity well. The development of Raughd's destructive psyche is also understood through their history, as the clone of a psychologically abusive "mother", Fosyf. The super-rich owner of a tea plantation that effectively employs slave labour for their "hand picked" marketing gimmick.
He's a possible psychopath - more dispassionate and controlled than Raughd's often reckless impulsiveness. Although they are, of course, always referred to with female pronouns, it's statistically 3 to 4 times more likely they'd be male, given the typical demographics of the pathology.
• Power, Control, Subservience and Freedom [Bigger Spoilers!]: perhaps the key theme(s) in the series. Examining how different personalities, attitudes and approaches to wielding power can be detrimental or beneficial to those with less. Also, how to treat those serving your enemies, who, themselves lack the power to make free choices. This ostensibly laudable three word mantra is apparently core to Radch thinking:
"Justice, propriety, and benefit. No just act could be improper, no proper act unjust. Justice and propriety, so intertwined, themselves led to benefit. The question of just who or what benefited was a topic for late-night discussions[...]"
But, of course, the Radch Empire is very far from a socially equal utopia. There's power differentials due to: different races (planetary and sub-sets) being looked down upon (most notably with skin colour); castes, or rather noble houses (judged by physical features); "rehabilitated" offenders psychologically conditioned to be unable to express anger (or even think it); religious influences; station administrator verses system governor; military pecking order; then everyone in thrall to supreme ruler, Anaander Mianaai.
The "tyrant" has direct control over the ships and station AIs, which they created and holds the highest level back door codes for. Writing (and updating) directives into them, secretly. Their captains have a lesser level of absolute control, more like intense loyalty. And conflicts of interest can arise between all of these imperatives, making it unpleasant for the machine minds. This sets the stage for a lot of focus on the subtle scope of passive resistance: the potentially game changing influence of merely avoiding helping those with power over you, beyond what they explicitly command. The issue with this is that it has to be minor enough that those in control don't really notice. So it relies on a certain amount of incompetence, from the tyrant(s), to be tripped up by this. Or at least hubris and impatience.
The AIs are said to be grown from the seed of an "AI core", along with the building of the vessel they are to control. With sensors strewn throughout, like a nervous system, so not easily replaced. A nice little detail, with biological parallels. They, and their Ancillaries, are not counted as Radchaai (citizens), and their self determinacy turns out to be the culmination of the plot's arc, pleasingly.
Anaander Mianaai, themselves, is a millennia old clone line, who founded the Radch empire, when they took control. It turns out that they use the same tech as with ancillary creation, to transfer their mind onto each new clone, and synchronise their will. A nice symmetry between the very top and the untouchable, non citizen slave bodies.
Anaander clones are spread out, inhabiting regional "palaces" in space, throughout their empire. Spread increasingly too thin, it turns out - not synchronising enough to maintain a single coherent will...
There's brief mention of the "Radch" itself being a Dyson Sphere at the centre of the empire, from which his empire started. Justifying territorial conquest to extend protection of it. Although this was barely touched on. There's no talk of why the human species is spread across the stars to begin with - all biocompatible, but a little different looking, like they've had time for divergent evolution.
• Aliens and Links to Iain M Banks Fiction [HUGE SPOILERS!]: If we set aside the Notai ("not AI", really?) as kind of a Radch/human sub-faction, there's only 3 others mentioned. The:
(1) "Geck" - an isolationist aquatic species, of no major consequence and we never meet.
(2) "Rrrrrr" - fuzzy snake like sentients, with a brief backstory role that is nonetheless tangled up with the all important treaty with the...
(3) Inscrutable "Presger" - They've been somewhat of an outside context problem for our Radch empire.
Again, we never directly encounter the Presger proper, just their human-ish translators. Up until a treaty was somehow struck (via these translators), there's mention of them "disassembling" Radchaai ships and citizens, alike. With the zest of a toddler pulling limbs off insects, I'm given to imagine. Which makes me think of some of the mysterious, god-like aliens in Babylon 5, that are basically massive blobs of colour that appear out of nowhere and happen to crush the odd ship. Like pedestrian's feet casually treading on ants.
The Presger sell "medical correctives" to the Radchaai (who can not make it themselves). A kind of miracle goo applied to severe injuries that hardens and cures all ailment. They also casually sold/gave a bunch of near magical guns to the Rrrrrr, specifically designed to be able to break through the otherwise impervious (personal) shields of Radch military personnel.
One of these guns is a key plot element, throughout the trilogy. Its mysterious power very much reminiscent of Iain M Bank's "A Gift from the Culture" short story. Its use in a space battle is fun and ultimately satisfying, despite the story not revealing the result of its use for a good while, and implying a lot, rather than giving specifics.
The translators seem to be genuinely operating on their own agender, rather than as puppets of their creators. But their effect appears like that of a Culture agent - to subtly manipulate a far lesser civilisation into improving itself. They are kind of whimsically whacky, with their pica like desire and ability to ingest unlikely foods, animals and objects. Perhaps physically more like a Culture ship avatar. Their apparent chaos covering the deft social nudges.
The use of a lowly human fragment, of a ship mind, shepherded through a long series of difficult events, to unlock this future, also makes me think of Feersum Endjinn. With Ergates guiding Bascule throughout the story just to open an inaccessibly stiff door for them (to save the world). Maybe the Presger, or just their ambassadors, set up the whole series of unlikely events quite deliberately. There was certainly serendipity involved. At any rate, Breq clearly grows as a person, as a necessary aspect of this. And those influenced by her strength and compassion are seen to develop, too. All quite satisfying.
►Oversights Addendum [Edited in 12 hours from first posting]: I realised I'd missed a few notable things...
• I'd totally forgotten about the "Geck" aliens! Which no one pointed out, oddly. I've edited them in, rewording part of the above. Suspension pods, too.
• A few "he" had slipped through by mistake. For the antagonists I personally read as being almost certainly male (Raughd, Fosyf, Anaanda - who Strigan does call "he" ). Now corrected; I don't think we have definitive gendering of anyone, except maybe Seivarden (male) and maybe Breq (female).
• I fear I may have wrongly assumed Administrator Celar is female, above. I was originally going back and forth, from their "wide and bulky" description sounding extremely male, but the big hair tied up (and maybe other things?) had me settle towards very curvaceous female. A later quote, from book 3, would make more sense (with Seivarden male, Breq female) if Celar is a big dude (with a hair style we'd consider feminine, but isn't in necessarily in this culture): "Station Administrator Celar’s massive, statuesque beauty. Hardly surprising, even if wide and heavy wasn’t Seivarden’s usual type."
• "Sphene", I left out! A damaged Notai ship, hiding out, slowly trying to repair and rebuild its ancillary crew since the faction lost to the Mianaai, millennia ago. They are also very keen for vengeance against the tyrant, so eventually align themselves with Breq and maybe give her some perspective on her own quest for vengeance.
We only ever meet one of Sphene's ancillaries - the ship itself remaining hidden somewhere in the ghost-gate system. Not running to the rescue for an epic space battle showdown as I'd kind of expected. And overall being a little incidental to the plot, except for keeping the Presger Translator occupied.
• Humour - I didn't really mention at all, either. But there's some really great dry honour that really tickled me. Like, in book 3, there was the unhelpfully detailed reports on the results of 75 "regional downwell radish-growing competitions". Then various pithy lines and back and forth with Sphene and the Translator. It almost gets a Firefly (TV series) vibe going. Certainly finishing strong.
• "Ancillary" buildings in Rise to Ruins (indie PC village builder tower defence game) were named at my suggestion (on Twitter), having been reading the first book at the time.
• The phrase "special circumstances" appears, italicised, in book 3. Although not in context, it immediately made me think: ooh, sneaky Culture reference?!?
• Another parallel (perhaps I'm reaching here) is to the alien "Tines" in Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep". They're group minds of usually 3 to 5 or so dog-like creatures. They synchronise their thoughts, to co-ordinate actions as a single entity and hold their identity across many generations of hosts, each at different individual ages. A ruthless Tine leader "builds" a very clever Tine by integrating 8 particular pups together, making the new individual very smart at maths, etc. Anaander is all biologically identical clones, but the ship AIs partially think on with the brains of their Ancilliaries. So would the varying cognitive abilities subtly change the ship's thinking and capabilities too?
• Identity is probably an even bigger theme (an alternative perspective lens to power and control). Every character in the series either wrestles with their own personal identity (e.g. Tisarwat most obviously), or are part of many deconstructions of the reader's conceptions of gender, race, species, group verses individual and the splits between, etc. See more in great comments e.g. here and here.
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3.99
**A place to discuss published speculative fiction**—novels, short stories, comics, and more. Not sure if a book counts? Then post it! Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alt. History, Postmodern Lit., and more are all welcome here. **The key is that it be speculative, not that it fit some arbitrary genre guidelines**. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.
" The mystery of a missing translator sets three lives on a collision course that will have a ripple effect across the stars in this powerful new novel by award-winning author Ann Leckie.
Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realization that they might want something else isn’t “optimal behavior”—it’s the type of behavior that results in elimination.
But Qven rebels. And in doing so, their path collides with that of two others. Enae, a reluctant diplomat whose dead grandmaman has left hir an impossible task as an inheritance: hunting down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. And Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his genetic roots—or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him.
As a Conclave of the various species approaches—and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line—the decisions of all three will have ripple effects across the stars."
r/Fantasy is the internet's largest discussion forum for the greater Speculative Fiction genre. Fans of fantasy, science fiction, horror, alt history, and more can all find a home with us. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. We ask all users help us create a welcoming environment by reporting posts/comments that do not follow the subreddit rules.
I came into this without having read the Imperial Radch trilogy. In fact, I was probably a third of the way through the book before I even noticed (by chance, poking around Goodreads for other purposes) that this was part of the Imperial Radch universe at all.
Good news, everyone! This works perfectly well as a standalone. Luckily.
There are three POV characters in this, each receiving about equal weight: Enae, left unmoored by the death of her grandmother, given a bit of make-work looking for a translator the alien Presgr lost track of two centuries before; Qven, a juvenile translator nearing adulthood; and Reet, an orphan with no knowledge of his past who has never quite fit in with everyone around him. No one expected Enae to succeed in her assignment, or even really try, but they gave it a sincere effort and found the missing translator’s offspring (Reet, of course - Leckie doesn’t try to hold the reader in suspense here). The Presgr translators want Reet back, but Reet (and his adoptive parents and friends) consider him human, thus triggering a diplomatic conflict.
Journeys of self discovery. High stakes negotiations. Cloak-and-dagger intrigues. Eshcer-esque landscapes. Cannibalism. This book has a lot going on, and I’m kind of amazed at how well it all managed to fit together. It’s both a very personal story and mind-bending science fiction.
As I said at the beginning here, this works as a standalone, no problem. But, that being said, I have the distinct feeling this would have had more weight if I’d read the Imperial Radch trilogy. I feel quite certain that there are crossover characters whom I would have recognized, and things like the Presgr and the Radch aren’t really given the introduction that I think they deserve - some degree of familiarity is assumed. So I give it four stars, but I feel like I might bump it up to five once I read the Imperial Radch trilogy. Which will be a high priority given how good this was.
Bingo categories: Published in 2023; Queernorm; Robots
r/Fantasy is the internet's largest discussion forum for the greater Speculative Fiction genre. Fans of fantasy, science fiction, horror, alt history, and more can all find a home with us. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. We ask all users help us create a welcoming environment by reporting posts/comments that do not follow the subreddit rules.
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r/Fantasy is the internet's largest discussion forum for the greater Speculative Fiction genre. Fans of fantasy, science fiction, horror, alt history, and more can all find a home with us. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. We ask all users help us create a welcoming environment by reporting posts/comments that do not follow the subreddit rules.
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**A place to discuss published speculative fiction**—novels, short stories, comics, and more. Not sure if a book counts? Then post it! Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alt. History, Postmodern Lit., and more are all welcome here. **The key is that it be speculative, not that it fit some arbitrary genre guidelines**. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.
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Science Fiction, or Speculative Fiction if you prefer. Fantasy too. Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick, Heinlein and other SF books. SF movies and TV shows. Fantasy stuff like Tolkien and Game of Thrones. Laser guns, space ships, and time travel. etc. Star Trek, Battlestar, Star Wars, etc.
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This reddit is for fans and creators of Science Fiction and related media in any form. SF topics should involve plausible ideas reached through the rational application of science. General speculative fiction posts are fine as long as they involve Science Fiction.
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This is a moderated subreddit. It is our intent and purpose to foster and encourage in-depth discussion about all things related to books, authors, genres, or publishing in a safe, supportive environment. If you're looking for help with a personal book recommendation, consult our Weekly Recommendation Thread, Suggested Reading page, or ask in r/suggestmeabook.
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