Ancillary Justice & Ancillary Sword

Review of the Imperial Radch series: Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy. One of the best space operas of the 21nd century.

My review from 2013 of Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Title: Ancillary Justice
Author:  Ann Leckie
Genre: Space opera, science fiction

The book is about an A.I. hiding in a human body. She used to be a spaceship, but is no longer that. She tries to navigate a human world. It is an epic science fiction story of the same kind of cloth that Dune was cut from.

Review

To me this book is very much like Dune and I hope it will get the same kind of recognition. It is the same kind of story somehow. It is as philosophical, military, epic, sad and filled with action as Dune.

I gave up trying to comment on the book as I read it because of the seer number of things I wanted to comment on as I read. Some pages has two or three highlights in my kindle version, and I never highlight while reading. As you can probably see the language is really great and there are some quite quotable quotes in there. To mention one, the emperor says:

“I didn’t get where I am by having reasonable goals”

Gender, music, songs, memory, identity, faith, destiny and moral choices are all strong themes throughout the book. And it helps make it a really crunchy and interesting read.

The ending very much remind me of Dune as well, but I can hardly talk about that without spoiling it. I will just say that I will be recommending this and nominating it wherever I get the chance.

I will not write more right now other than: I recommend it wholeheartedly  to anyone who like epic science fiction of the kind that are both very personal and bigger than life. I hope you read it and enjoy it.

I read this in the kindle app, and this book is so good I want a physical copy of it. I want to be able to hand to my friends and say, please read this and I want to be able to look at it on my bookshelf and go, ahhh I should read this again.

Close reading – the first 10 %

This is the passage that made me interested in the book and that Tansy mentioned on Galactic Suburbia. I really hope this gets explored more in the rest of the book.

“She was probably male, judging from the angular mazelike patterns quilting her shirt. I wasn’t entirely certain. It wouldn’t have mattered, if I had been in Radch space. Radchaai don’t care much about gender, and the language they speak – my own first language – doesn’t mark gender in any way. This language we were speaking now did, and I could make trouble for myself if I used the wrong forms. It didn’t help that cues meant to distinguish gender changed from place to place, sometimes radically and rarely made much sense to me.”

As far as I can remember, this is the first story I have read with an A.I. as the narrator. This really have an impact on the way the story is told. She is noticing and wondering about things in a quite inhuman way.

“Sometimes I don’t know why I do the things I do. Even after all this time it’s still a new thing for me not to know, not having orders to follow from one moment to the next.”

Humans might not always know their own motivations, but this is a part of the human experience not something foreign and no more a source of stress than a hundred other things we run into every day.

“If that was what she wanted I had no right to prevent her. But if she had wanted to die, why hadn’t she done the thing cleanly, registered her intention and gone to the medic as anyone would? I didn’t understand.”

For most humans it would be harder to understand the a suicidal intent than not understanding the means of that suicide. Though this could of course be the thought of a human, it does have a rather cold edge to it. What I am trying to say is that the voice of the narrator (I am still not sure what she is called) has a quite alien feel to it and it is quite effective.

Another interesting little tid-bit about gender and linguistic (and yes I like quotes)

“Because I knew everyone here, I knew she was female, and a grandparent, both of which had to be acknowledged if I were speaking to her not only grammatically but also courteously.”

Time scales

So far the only thing that has annoyed me about the story, is a hobby horse of mine in science fiction. The narrator is 2000 years old and one of the other space ships is 3000 year old. 3000 years ago in human history was the period where Homer wrote the Odyssey – 3000 years is pretty much all of human history (the part where we have written sources).

The scale of human history simply is not counted in thousands of years, but in hundreds. I do not understand why this huge time scale is needed in telling of fantasy and science fictions stories. In societies without written sources 150 years is long enough to be always. And 500 years in a society is enough that there are huge chunks of history where we just do not know what happened.

Having an empire rain for much more than 1000 years is simply unprecedented. Having the same political system for more than 1000 years is also becoming a stretch – yes even for China – there are huge changes in how things are run when you look at that long periods. Having the same dynasty for that long in the case of fantasy – that is just silly – especially if you need a male heir. I will stop ranting. So in my head I just think of that long time scales as a way of saying – for a very long time. Of course the crazy long time spans might get explained.

The short review

I think this was the best book I read last year. It was so refreshing, clever and entertaining. It gives me the same vibes as Dune. The protagonist is so different from most other science fiction I have read, but her motives are still very understandable. Loved the way Leckie played with the language and played with our perception of gender. This makes it sound it is a really high-brow read, but it is also so entertaining and have tons of action and definitely a sense of wonder.

I recommend Ancillary Justice wholeheartedly to anyone who like epic science fiction of the kind that are both very personal and bigger than life. I hope you read it and enjoy it.

The stats: Ancillary Justice

Published: October 1st 2013 by Orbit
Read: First reading, 26/10 – 29/10 2013
Pages: 416 pages

Author: Female, white, USA
The protagonist: Agender spaceship in female body

My review from 2014 of Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

Opening sentence:

“Now if the tyrant was watching – she was surely watching, though Mercy of Kalr, would be so long as we were in the system – let her think I was resenting having a baby foisted on me when I’d rather have someone who knew what they were doing.”

Last year I read Ancillary Justice and I loved it. I was one of most amazing books I have read in years. The second book was very different and very very good.

Class & gender

While gender played a huge role in the first book, it took a backseat in the second book because the book took place inside the radch society where the lack of gender distinctions are normal. That made the whole gender issue slip into the background. There were a few characters where I found myself gendering them, but it was much less of an issue than in the first book.

This second book was very much about class issues within the radch society. Breq who is now captain on a spaceship takes it onto her self to address cases of injustices in the treatment of the lower class citizens and new citizens in the system where she is in charge. She of course clashes with authority wherever she goes and the story is very much about her navigating the political system of the situation.

Guilt and redemption

The story in the second is also very much about guilt and redemption. Breq had to kill one of her officers back when she was a ship. She loved that officer and she feels extremely guilty about what she did and she tries to make sure the officer’s sister is safe. This provides much of the motivation for Breq’s action in this second book.

Breq seems both quite alien and very human – once again themes of identity is important – especially when it comes to the Tyrant. But themes of racism and cultural superiority also run as currents in the narrative.

The mystery

While all of this is going on there is also something weird going on outside the “ghost gates” in the system on the other side. It would seem that people are getting bought and sold and perhaps part of the Tyrant’s personality is on the other side. I am sure this will be the issue in the next book.

The review

It is a much slower book, which I like because I tend to like quite scenes of live lived better than big action scenes – especially once I know the characters.

I really enjoyed the book. I loved the interpersonal relationships, the drama and I loved that class was such a strong theme in this book. I very much recommend it.

The stats: Ancillary Sword

Published: October 7th 2014 by Orbit
Read: October 07 to 11, 2014
Pages: 400 pages

This review was originally posted: October 29, 2013 & October 18, 2014 & June 22, 2016. Updated June 26, 2023