Ancillary Justice
Ratings571
Average rating4
DNF - PG 66
Why?
1. Flashbacks upon flashbacks.
2. Little to no dialogue in the non-flashback sections.
3. Willful misgendering because Breq can't be bothered.
4. Breq reminds me of Murderbot in certain ways (whom I don't like, either).
What's not to love about a spaceship AI trying to get revenge on whoever blew her ship up? This trilogy is good.
Misschien 5*, maar ik zou ook dan niet meteen weten aan wie ik het kado zou doen :-)
Ben geen verstokte SF lezer, hou het meer bij het soort SF dat Gibson en Stephenson schrijven, maar dit was een zeer aangename kennismaking met een ander genre.
AI's runnen ruimteschepen, en gebruiken tig mensen en humanoids om een “presence” in de wereld te hebben, allemaal als een soort neural net aan elkaar geknoopt. Dan gebeurt er iets met wat voor “god” zou kunnen doorgaan en is er justice gewenst... Verder geen spoilers...
perhaps it was my skyrocketing high expectations, perhaps it was the fact the main character is a literal AI, perhaps it was the slow plot... ancillary justice was just quite dull. and distant. felt no attachment to the story. last few chapters were slightly interesting. overall, alluring concept that to me, fell cold in execution.
It barely made it over the three star hurdle
The good: Interesting characters, interesting world and interesting world building
The bad: A story that drifts off into utter boring rambling instead of getting more interesting
The ugly: She? or She? or He? or She? or He? Useless gendering that made no sense
Recommended? Honestly not really, I will try the second book because overall it was not too bad, but I will not keep my hopes up
Boring AF, nothing really happening. This is another of those wannabe highbrow books in the vain of ‘A Memory Called Empire'. Lot's of dialogue where the author tries to load it with layers and subtext, unfortunately this is so far fetched that the protagonist explains the hidden meaning of the dialogues afterwards because no one would get that.
There is a very interesting world, an interesting enemy, interesting politics, space travel etc. etc but it does not really get explored. Instead we get treated to mundane problems of a, granted, interesting protagonist. I wished this was more scifi and less drama.
DNF the series. :(
I very much appreciate the originality and freshness of this story, but I never /loved/ the book, never connected with any of the characters (apart from feeling some sympathy for Breq) so alas, no 5 stars.
Basically what @Mpauli said, but more positive :)
I really wanted to love this but deeply struggled with it. Part it feels like it wants to be hard SF, but is actually written like a Becky Chambers novel. I love Becky Chambers’ books because of how different they are from “traditional” SF, and this book, unfortunately, was not able to stick that landing.
The last 17% of the book was very interesting to me, but it resolved too quickly and easily. I’m giving it a three because I thought the premise was interesting, but it’s probably more of a two because I don’t know that I’d actually recommend it to anyone. An interesting thought experiment, I suppose, but not good enough to make me want to read the next two and endure more of the same.
Look, there are some books that you just kinda enjoy without really quite having a complete grasp of what's going on. This is one of those books. The writing is dense, the plot is nebulous at times, and it kept giving me that feeling like I was that one person in a conversation that had no context, no backstory of what's going on, and not getting the references or inside jokes. Nevertheless though, when you do eventually get some semblance of a plot driver about 30% through, the story becomes very compelling - although you'll never quite feel like you have a thorough grasp of what's going on, just an approximation at best.One of the most confusing things of this book, especially at first, is also the use of pronouns. Our narrator Breq is unable to distinguish gender identifiers in people (as per the Radch society she comes from), and so uses “she/her” on basically everyone. At first it just made me feel like everyone she was coming into contact with her female-presenting, but then other non-Radch people that she meets will use he/him on the same person that Breq uses she/her on, Seivarden being the earliest and most prominent example. This got a bit of getting used to, but at least the narrative does have Breq reflecting about this difference in gender identifiers in different societies/cultures/languages, so it's easier for us the readers to get used to it.The plot itself takes a long time to crystallize into something remotely clear enough to follow (about 30-40% of the book), but it does get pretty compelling after that point. There's definitely action here, and it also asks a lot of very thought-provoking questions about colonialism, imperialism, and when would the ends justify the means, in this case the act of making ancillaries. Having just read [b:A Memory Called Empire 37794149 A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1) Arkady Martine https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1526486698l/37794149.SY75.jpg 59457173], I thought the themes in this book were very similar but dealt with in a very different way. While Empire had a clear stance against colonialism, Ancillary is not quite so clear-cut, and in so being I think it leaves a wider space for debate and thought.Despite how confused I was for most of this book, I would certainly be continuing on the rest of the series.
This one was a slow and challenging start for me. The complexity of an AI inhabiting multiple bodies with multiple perspectives at once. The main character's culture only uses she/her pronouns regardless of a beings sex. I wasn't sure how to picture a number of the characters in the book, including the main character.
What resonated with me in this book is how it portrays the challenges and pressures we face with cultural norms. The way we accept or rebel against them and what motivates us. Sometimes known, sometimes not. Half way through I thought I would not likely read another in the series. Now I'm hooked.
I understand how a lot of people might like this book, because the setup of this universe is very good. I personally found the story difficult to follow with an unfriendly writing style and a lot of repetition. Especially in audiobook format it was a little bit of a slog to get through.
“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 ideas of gender and identity.
To get what I disliked out of the way first, I sort of didn't like how the book onboards the reader. While normally I don't have a problem with books that start you out in the middle of the action, there's usually enough in-the-moment exposition to at least orient the reader and get them moving in the same direction as the author/story. I feel like more could be done to make the reader feel less lost, as I didn't start putting pieces together until maybe a third of the way through. I also felt like the last chapter was weak, when compared with the rest of the book. Without spoilers, it felt tonally different than the rest of the book, like it only existed to carry the reader from book 1 to book 2.
I will say that once the story started coming together for me (literally, about halfway through), I really felt drawn in and interested in what was going on. I liked the uniqueness of the main character's viewpoint, and even the side characters all felt interesting and varied (if a little disposable, when compared with both the main character and the antagonist). The twist on the idea of gender was also unique, ultimately leading me to the idea that gender didn't matter in this book. I also liked the exposition on identity and what it means when you're not human.
I give this 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 out of respect for the friend who recommended it to me and the fact that Goodreads doesn't do half stars. I'll definitely continue the series some point soon out of curiosity to see where the story goes.
A dear friend gifted me this book. My star rating might be a bit misleading - for another anchor, I liked it enough that I plan to buy & read the other two books in the trilogy. My two favorite things about the book are both interesting philosophical issues: first, what does it mean to be human (deftly explored from many compelling angles by a protagonist who is not seen as human by the world she inhabits); and second, what is it with our obsession with gendering? The protagonist's primary language doesn't use gendered pronouns, and as someone who works really hard to embrace gender fluidity both professionally and in my personal life, it was very instructive to notice my own desire to “know” the gender of characters all described as “she,” and then reflect on why that felt important for me to know. I think it's a great example of a way of raising a complex and important issue in a novel that never felt didactic, but more truly experiential. Plot-wise, I think Leckie introduced but then didn't fully explore spiritual/existential issues as effectively as she could have, and there were times in the first half when the timeline & characters were a little harder for me to follow than I normally find sci-fi in a way that felt accidental, not intentional. Overall, though, I enjoyed this, and want to find out what the narrator does next in what promises to be a sequel full of moral ambiguity.
Probably more of a 3.5.
I remember buying this trilogy a while ago because it's award winning and I've heard about it a lot, but I never got around to it because I wasn't sure if I would actually enjoy what I thought was a very hardcore sci-fi novel. So when one of my book clubs chose it as March's BOTM, I thought I had no more excuses and decided to start listening to the audiobook. And now I have to unpack a bit about how I feel.
The first thing that strikes as unique immediately in this Radch empire is that it is a gender less world and everyone is referred to using the “she/her” pronouns (I suppose that must be their default). So it was actually very interesting to see characters from the Radch trying to figure out the pronouns of people whom they meet in other locations where they do have genders and sometimes wear markers to specify it. Its particularly troubling for anyone from the Radch because they are very focused on formality and would never want to insult anyone by addressing them wrongly. In a similar vein, the Radch are very religious and have their own god and rituals and believe everything is the will of Amaat, but what I found interesting was that how they incorporated the gods of their annexed lands into their own pantheon. I've just never seen such a unique combo of religion and sci-fi before, but it might not feel the same for more veteran readers of the genre.
The aspect of this world that is most important (it's in the title ofcourse) is the use of ancillaries, who are multiple human like beings who all share the same AI mind of their ship. Because the ship in this case is one of our main narrators, we get an almost omnipresent perspective and we see multiple events/conversations happening at the same time through the eyes of a different ancillary. This idea leads to some very interesting questions about identity, the amount of agency each of the ancillaries have, and if they can survive as individuals.
The writing of this definitely surprised me, mostly because I don't expect Hugo award winners to have easily accessible writing styles. But even having a dual timeline didn't trouble me at all and I understood everything quite easily. The past timeline was definitely the interesting one, with an annexation as well as a rebel conspiracy which leads to why our main character is hell bent on revenge in the current timeline - but it's the present story that was very unexpected. I thought it would be action packed or very tense, but for more than half of the book, it was very slice of life and could even feeling boring to some readers because of the slow pace as well as a non existent plot. However, the audiobook narration was very well done and kept me engaged much more than the book would have. The main character also enjoys music a lot, so it was quite surprising and fun to listen to the narrator sing many times during the story. But the core reason which drives the main character gets resolved in such a way towards the end that felt slightly disappointing.
Breq is our main character who is on a revenge mission and it was very interesting to see her motivations, how they evolved, and how much the transformation from being part of a ship to an individual has affected her personality. Seivaarden on the other hand is a long lost military captain come back, trying to find her identity in a world which feels very unfamiliar to her, and hoping to find a new purpose and meaning for her existence. I thought their dynamic was interesting, where they both seem very indifferent to each other's wellbeing but act in the exact opposite manner. And I can't wait to see how it develops across the trilogy. I also liked the side characters Lieutenants Awn and Skaiaat, whose presence maybe limited but are very memorable as well as an unexpected driving force of the story.
But it's definitely the Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai who was most fascinating to get to know. A ruler who has a penchant for power, who decides to replicate herself into multiple bodies, which then leads to very unexpected circumstances and tragedies - is something that I found to be quite intriguing and the way the author uses her writing to show us the differences between the various instances of the Lord was pretty impressive.
In the end, I can see why this may have won awards but it's also not something that everyone will like. It hits the sweet spot for a world with unique gender exploration, colonization, discussion of class privilege and prejudices arousing from it, as well as the idea of finding one's identity in an unfamiliar world. But it also comes with a very slow pace, non existent plot for most of the book, and a dry narrative style that might not suit everyone's tastes. I definitely found the audiobook to be a much better format to enjoy this story, so that would be my recommendation. And I'm also looking forward to see where this is going.
Although there were places where the book dragged a little, I'd say overall it was a very exciting read. The setting is akin to Asimov's Foundation (an old Empire on the brink of collapse), yet it has a unique twist to it. The empire, according to the author, was partially inspired by Romans, but the culture she created is very original, with interesting customs, linguistic norms and religions tradition.
I also like that the author doesn't portray any nations as good or evil. Every nation consists of people and people are different. Sometimes a person who think is not so great grows and show they can be better.
One of the most notable aspects of the empire is a complete lack of concept of gender. We're first introduced to it when the protagonist refers to male character as “she” and we later learn that is the standard pronoun they use for everyone. I really like this idea, even though it took me a bit to get used to.
I liked it!
I found it difficult to follow the first 15% of the book and only really got into it at about 25% which is pretty far compared to what I'm used to. I'm sure it was intentional but I was doubting my understanding and comprehension initially. This made it feel like I was forcefully trudging through until a point I would hopefully understand.
Once I got into it the book kept on getting more interesting and exciting as it progressed.
I enjoyed the way the book played with concept of self, culture and gender concepts.
It took me a good while to really get into this book (In fact, I would say it took until about 3/4 when I started REALLY enjoying it, even if I was already enjoying it somewhat, but only then it truly “clicked”). Some aspects of it were tampering my enjoyment (the way it doesn't really hold your hand, the serviceable but not that impressive writing, the way it was quite hard to sympathize with or against the protagonist because of how vague their purpose was for most of the book, ...
But it really is an interesting work. At some point during the novel, these sentences are said: “All the years between young Lieutenant Seivarden and Captain Seivarden, they were made up of tiny moments. Minor things”. This is also a good description of the book. This is no exciting, flashy space opera: it's a book mainly consisting of small, intricate moments, and minor story decisions.
One aspect of the book that has drawn a lot of attention, but really is one of those small, mostly insignificant story decisions, is what the author decided to do with pronouns. Not like Le Guin in her The Left Hand of Darkness: a bold, deliberate statement, but just another detail, an aspect of worldbuilding.
It's a weird little story, but I heartily recommend it.
I only made it half-way. I had no idea what was going on and I didn't care enough to find out.