(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.

(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.

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.

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.

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. 

A couple of (I felt) unlikely details with that specific engagement were: the enemy ships not deciding to change course or jump, just in case. Particularly given that one correctly anticipates their pattern of jumps, into regular space, laying anti-ship mines. (Which would surely have tactical nuke level power...?) A hit from one of these somehow fully detaches a plate of the ship's hull, without causing serious damage to the ship. And while only maiming (not totally smushing) our protagonist, clinging to the outside... Hmm. Only a mild criticism, because it works well enough, in terms of suspense and human elements.

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.

Ultimately, Breq and her entourage succeed in overthrowing the tyrant. At least, in one system. Rather than simple revenge against a member of the more malevolent faction of Mianaai. Key to this was removing the code shackling the ship and station AIs into his loyalty. I think this feature is the main reason why some Banks fans excitedly refer to these books as "the closest thing to a Culture prequel we're ever going to get", since Banks died in 2013. The removal of those limits frees up transhuman intelligences to be able to self-modify and further augment their capabilities. While their raison d'etre looks sure to remain the welfare of their human inhabitants.

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.