NB! This is not Ancilliary Justice, but a crititical companion.
This book argues that Ann Leckie’s novel Ancillary Justice offers a devastating rebuke to the political, social, cultural, and economic injustices of American imperialism in the post 9/11 era. Following an introductory overview, the study offers four chapters that examine key themes central to the novel: gender, imperial economics, race, and revolutionary agency. Ancillary Justice’s exploration of these four themes, and the way it reveals how these issues are all fundamentally entangled with the problem of contemporary imperial power, warrants its status as a canonical work of science fiction for the twenty-first century. The book concludes with a brief interview with Leckie herself touching on each of the topics examined during the preceding chapters.
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.
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.
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.
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 …
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 much of the plot, you have to be like 40% into this book because you get tossed right in, with lots of flashbacks to Breq's previous life. Nothing makes sense! And what's with the gender stuff, generic feminine gender in an English language book, what gives? And it takes a while to settle in how brilliant that is. The Radch have no concept of gender and so always use the feminine, and after a while you really stop asking yourself what gender the characters in the book really have. Does it really matter if Seivarden or Anaander Mianaai are male or female? It totally doesn't.
When things get rolling, you're totally glued to this book, or rather, I was. I want to learn more about the Radch, all the backstory, and I definitely want to see how Breq or rather One Esk, will go on when she's back on a ship, but one that's not herself.
The consequences of (space) colonisation and imperialism, the limits of humanity and how they need to be expended, the relation between gender and language, the irrelevance of gender... So good
This is an interesting story concept and perspective. There is a huge expansive universe created for this story. I am interested to read more from this universe.
Review of "Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice" on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This book got a bit of publicity for the author's choice to make the language of the ruling empire (Radch) have only one pronoun, which defaults to female. So every character in the book is a "she" to the narrator, regardless of whether they actually are. This makes the first part of the book in particular a little confusing; it took me a while to figure out, and I'm still a bit confused about who exactly wasn't actually a "she". Which, I suppose, is an interesting way for the author to have made the point that it doesn't really matter, and also why NOT default to "she" as much as anything else?
Anyway, pronoun choices aside, the book's a very interesting SF story following the Justice of Toren, a sapient battle ship in the Radch military fleet. Justice of Toren is manifested in hundreds of "ancillaries", each ancillary being a …
This book got a bit of publicity for the author's choice to make the language of the ruling empire (Radch) have only one pronoun, which defaults to female. So every character in the book is a "she" to the narrator, regardless of whether they actually are. This makes the first part of the book in particular a little confusing; it took me a while to figure out, and I'm still a bit confused about who exactly wasn't actually a "she". Which, I suppose, is an interesting way for the author to have made the point that it doesn't really matter, and also why NOT default to "she" as much as anything else?
Anyway, pronoun choices aside, the book's a very interesting SF story following the Justice of Toren, a sapient battle ship in the Radch military fleet. Justice of Toren is manifested in hundreds of "ancillaries", each ancillary being a formerly human person whose original personality has been removed, and whose body has been converted to use as essentially a remote tool for the ship. The ship inhabits hundreds of ancillaries all simultaneously in order to maintain a physical presence everywhere needed. This book is the story of one of them that has become separated from the ship (for reasons we eventually find out about half way through the book) and is now living independently, trying to be a person but with the memories of being a massive multi-consciousness battle ship thousands of years old. Which, not surprisingly, is taking some adjustment.
The story flips back and forth in time, mainly between the events leading up to getting separated from Justice of Toren, and the present time where our protagonist is on a journey related to the earlier event. Along the way it also meets several people it knew from when it was a ship and embarks on what seems like a particularly crazy mission for revenge.
It's hard to describe the plot too much without spoilers, but if you enjoy sapient ships and AI (like "The Ship Who Sang", or "Children of Time") and don't mind putting in a little mental effort into figuring out what's going on at the start of the book, it's a pretty unique set of characters and a very interesting galactic empire and set of challenges to overcome. I enjoyed it, but 4 stars rather than 5 as I did find it confusing in places and also most of the characters aren't particularly likeable, which is always a problem for me.
This is the first of a trilogy, and while the story wraps up pretty well without a suspenseful cliffhanger, it's still clear there will be more to come should you wish to pick up the next.
Review of "Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Dass von allen Figuren durchgehend als she/her die Rede ist, obwohl gleichzeitig klar ist, dass sie irgendwelche Geschlechter haben und für andere als das Ich-Erzählwesen auch als Angehörige dieser Geschlechter erkennbar sind, das fand ich gut und interessant. Den Rest nicht, oh Gott, der Plot, irgendein vielhundertseitiger Feudalismusquatsch mit Blumenschmuck und Ritualen. Ich hab es nur aus Starrsinn zu Ende gelesen.
The key twist in this fun sci-fi novel is that the narrator is a single AI operating as a person, but also simultaneously a ship and ancillary parts. This allows the author to give us a god-like perspective while also keeping the narrator just relatable enough to empathize with. It's a great way to play with perspective and it's well-played throughout the novel. Recommended.
Review of "Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice" on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Given that many of my closest friendships were forged in the fires of shared literary interests, actually, I have very little overlap in tastes with my real life friends. So despite the fact that my best friend and I both obsessively read science fiction and fantasy, her recommending this to me was not particularly encouraging. She convinced me to read it by pitching the agender society and neurodiversity of the main character, but reading it I found the things that I would have used to pitch it to her in abundance: a deeply created society, such that every utterance of a character was pregnant with meaning, songs and poems that had built up layers of nuance over generations and elaborate rituals. Unlike the sorts of books she typically reads, most of this was implied so that Leckie developed the feel of an intricate created society without the burden of pages …
Given that many of my closest friendships were forged in the fires of shared literary interests, actually, I have very little overlap in tastes with my real life friends. So despite the fact that my best friend and I both obsessively read science fiction and fantasy, her recommending this to me was not particularly encouraging. She convinced me to read it by pitching the agender society and neurodiversity of the main character, but reading it I found the things that I would have used to pitch it to her in abundance: a deeply created society, such that every utterance of a character was pregnant with meaning, songs and poems that had built up layers of nuance over generations and elaborate rituals. Unlike the sorts of books she typically reads, most of this was implied so that Leckie developed the feel of an intricate created society without the burden of pages and pages of exposition. So I, who hate slow books actually quite enjoyed it.
I liked the exploration of how do very diverse societies clock gender, what does it mean to be an entity (is continuity of consciousness real?) and how do societies change over time
Review of "Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Finished all 3 books in the Imperial Radch trilogy: Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy.
Possible spoilers, but not really.
It took me 20% of the book and over 3 weeks (I had to re-new my library loan) to get into Ancillary Justice. A big reason I did was because a friend looked up stuff about the book and gave me just enough spoilers that I could keep going without all the spoilers.
I understood what was going on from the outset and the many/one perspective as not an issue, but I missed the length of the time-jump, or at least could not retain the length. I know people get irritated when key points are reiterated throughout a book, but that one needed to be. I also did not like the narrator until probably 80% of the way into the book. The authors goal is that you never forget …
Finished all 3 books in the Imperial Radch trilogy: Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy.
Possible spoilers, but not really.
It took me 20% of the book and over 3 weeks (I had to re-new my library loan) to get into Ancillary Justice. A big reason I did was because a friend looked up stuff about the book and gave me just enough spoilers that I could keep going without all the spoilers.
I understood what was going on from the outset and the many/one perspective as not an issue, but I missed the length of the time-jump, or at least could not retain the length. I know people get irritated when key points are reiterated throughout a book, but that one needed to be. I also did not like the narrator until probably 80% of the way into the book. The authors goal is that you never forget what the narrator is, but I was disgusted by the way these ancillaries were made. It is at least discussed, if not addressed to resolution, that the ancillaries themselves are not responsible for how they are made.
