Intricate, immersive and thought-provoking, this is the best sci-fi I have read in a long time. Particularly interesting is the villain, Anaander Manaii, whose ability to compartmentalize her atrocities, as well as sabotage them, is not only interesting in that it creates a complex character but also in that she embodies the failures and successes, of large, secretive and ruthless imperial systems. Finding fragments in wholes and wholes in fragments is part of the satisfying unraveling of the plot. Finding humans in machines and machines in humans is hardly anything new, but the details and imaginative rendering of this far distant humanity makes Ancillary Justice stand out as epic. A huge plus is also the gender ambiguity. And the time shifts. And the heroine's bad-assedness...