Ancillary Justice

Paperback, 416 pages

English language

Published Sept. 30, 2013 by Orbit Books.

ISBN:
978-0-316-24662-0
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
828142663

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (338 reviews)

On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Once, she was the Justice of Toren—a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.

2 editions

neat exercise in perspective and cool worldbuilding

4 stars

writing a protagonist who is several different people wrapped into one consciousness, and is for some part of the story, not necessarily reliable as a storyteller, feels like it would've been a challenge, but ann leckie made it seem natural

the worldbuilding is, typically for good sci fi, brilliant. i felt absorbed into it. the constant surveillance within the radch is disturbing and feels connected to the real-life present. the colour and the characters are lovely.

i also noted that this is ann leckie's first full length novel and i'm super impressed.

i'm eager to read the next 2 in the series, though i'm going to read something else in between so i don't get series burnout!

Two sides of a crisis

5 stars

There's so many good bits and little shiny details in this epic redemption journey. In the past, a simple occupation mission by an atrocious all-conquering invasion force goes awry with a mysterious conspiracy coming to a head. The protagonist is an AI ship consciousness multiply embodied in enslaved human soldiers. A crisis builds under the watchful eye of an empress that rules from within thousands of bodies.

In the present, the aftermath of the crisis is our protagonist singly embodied, troubled by the atrocities it committed and dedicated to a hopeless mission of vengeance.

There is a lot of dealing with a... not an untrustworthy narrator but an extremely neurodivergent naive narrator. Lots of fun gender issues and language issues that present as interesting puzzles for the reader.

Review of 'Ancillary Justice' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

J’ai eu du mal à me mettre dedans, les règles grammaticales sur le genre étant non seulement confusante mais désagréable (j’ai eu l’occasion de lire un livre où tout était genré au féminin « elle pleut », « la bébé », mais ce n’est pas pareil).
Après quelques chapitres (et ayant appris que la version originale était aussi « perturbante » et que ce n’était pas une aberration de traduction), j’ai enfin profité du livre.
Une histoire complexe et très bien ficelée, originale, que j’ai trouvé très rafraîchissante.

Intriguing concepts to mull over at leisure

No rating

The idea of a split awareness, of “self” being distributed among multiple bodies drew me in, but I think I enjoyed the concept more than the story itself. I found the present-day story in the first half slow going. I don’t know how necessary the dual timeline was. The Radch (Radchaai?) culture was interesting, with its rituals, religion, tea and inter-house politics. That said, many of the cultural details seemed there more as unrelated background, and the story could have played out in a similar way in a very different setting.

The characters and there decisions didn’t always make sense to me, which maybe kept me from being fully engaged. Overall, I’m glad I read this, but I’m not in a rush to pick up the sequel.

reviewed Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Clever page-turner with heart

5 stars

On the recommendation of a dear mustelid, I've read:

Ann Leckie's "Ancillary Justice" (2013), a space opera following an expansive battleship AI who's found herself lost and reduced to a single human body, and is seeking to do... something, to perhaps avenge that loss.

Themes include gender blindness and what I'm reading as commentary on the vastness and heterogeneity of the human mind.

10/10: I wasn't bored for a single page, or paragraph-- much more than I can say of most favorites.

Very good

4 stars

There's a lot of death and destruction happening throughout the book and the Radch is quite an evil Empire. Nevertheless, the two main characters grew on me quickly. Great world-building but done in a restrained manner. The story itself is quite the wild ride. It also stands on its own, despite being the first book in a trilogy.

Review of 'Ancillary Justice' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

"Unity, I thought, implies the possibility of disunity. Beginnings imply and require endings."

This is a difficult review to write, because I thought there was a lot to like in this book! I also thought there was a lot that bothered me about this book too! I'm terrible at math and am not sure where my book calculus is going to lie on this one.

I'm going to skip a casual recap of the story, because it's a very hard story to summarize without spoilers. A lot of the reveals aren't really major story twists, but just small things the reader has to put together for the overall story to make sense. I feel like summarizing the story would do it an injustice (hehehe), so I'll just say that this is a civil war-esque story in a sci-fi setting with an interesting main character viewpoint and some twists on standard …

Review of 'Ancillary Justice' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I’m not usually one for caring about plot but, I could have used more in this case. The discussion about identity was interesting at times but overall didn’t really go deep enough from me, and the relationships all fell flat too. Still there’s some interesting ideas and concepts explored so it’s worth a read, but I think Leckie got too involved in the the concepts to come up with a plot for them to be important in. Maybe the next book will help to flesh out the relationships and world a little more.

Review of 'Ancillary Justice' on 'GoodReads'

5 stars

2021-07-05: 2nd reading: absolutely loved this book. Maybe because I've already read the series and that made it far less confusing this time, or I was just in the right mood this time. For whatever reason, really enjoyed this book.

2018-08-13: Original reading: Needlessly confusing language about ships and titles, so much so that I almost stopped reading. But then I missed the story so picked it up again via audiobook, and loved it overall. Still think I don't totally understand what a "justice", "mercey" is. More in the confusion and some guesses here: www.goodreads.com/questions/1376602-i-m-half-way-through-the-book-thought-i/answers/743517-my-understanding-of

Review of 'Ancillary Justice' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

не певен... окремі фрагменти читаються цікаво й легко: ті, де події розвиваються швидко. решта — повільні, заплутані діалоги або монологи, в якх я плутався (на слух, бо аудіокнижка) як мале дитя... коротше кажучи, таке.

Review of 'Ancillary Justice' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

What a slow burner this book is. By the time you realize how really really good it is, you're more than halfway done, so it definitely requires patience.

The first-person narrator is Breq, who felt a bit like a prototype for our beloved Murderbot from the Martha Wells series. Breq is an ancillary, a human body controlled by the AI of a ship, in this case the Justice of Toren. Only Breq's ship no longer exists, so instead of having hundreds of bodies and eyes and all that comes with being the body of a ship, there's just her, on her mission to kill the Lord of the Radch, the leader of the Empire of Radch.

Along the way she gets stuck with Seivarden, one of her former officers who's struggling with substance abuse after waking up a 1000 years after her ship was destroyed.

In order to understand this …

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