Translation State, by Ann Leckie

 This entry in the Imperial Radch universe really shows Ann Leckie's writing skills. We have three protagonists, and cannot do without any of them. And we get to learn more about the Presger, that incredibly alien threat.

There's also a lot of interesting and astute political commentary here. Leckie has built a consistent world where gender and race are fluid concepts, with alternative pronouns used naturally. She then reintroduces race and oppression through the Phren and the Hikipi, two human races from LoveHate station now residing on a planet. The Hikipi suffer from terrible oppression at the hands of the Phren, but this does not make them into saints and martyrs. The Hikipi fall for disinformation (the Presger aren't real!) and commit violence just like real humans do. The point of valuing all people, and lifting up those who have suffered oppression, is not to put them on a pedestal. It's to make space for them as people.

Family and human connection are the center of the novel. Protagonists Reet (raised as human) and Qven (a Presger Translator) want to be human, and their family (who adopted Reet, and then embraced Qven when Qven is in a relationship with Reet) fight for their right to be human.

There's so much high quality teaching going on that it starts to become the point of the book. That's the only issue I have, and hard to say it's a real one. The Imperial Radch is an incredibly complex place, Leckie can explore it for her whole career and just get started. Looking forward to the next one.

My Goodreads Review

The Justified, by Ann Leckie

 Our protagonist is Het, one of the Eyes of Mehar, and she has been away for a long time.  She is called back to deal with her ruler's paranoia about opposition.  Dissent keeps arising in the underclass known as the Single-Lived.  The Justified and above come back, by way of their Animas.  Het is one bloodthirsty goddess, enjoying solving issues through mass slaughter.  She observes that the single-lived come and go, but the Justified are constant.  Her lieutenants recommend a purge of the single-lived--she goes the other way.  This one is also in The Mythic Dream and comes by way of Egypt.

Provenance, by Ann Leckie

Provenance by Ann Leckie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


At first I had trouble getting going with this novel. The setup is lighter and feels less ultimately important than the Ancillary trilogy--everything is smaller in scale. Hwae just feels like a less serious civilization than the Radch. Because it is, as it turns out. The protagonist, Ingray Aughskold, is maybe from an earlier but very authentic brand of female protagonist--she is not a brute, she doubts herself a lot, and makes mistakes. But she has excellent instincts.

The culture of Hwae feels very homey. The emphasis on "vestiges" rolls together souvenirs, artifacts and religious relics. It's a defining cultural affectation.

And that's what eventually grew on me about the book, and made it get better as it went along. The book wears its heart on its sleeve. All the characters are deeply motivated by forms of basic decency, even the less good ones. This theme is part of the Ancillary series as well, especially expressed through the Justice of Toren, but here it's front and center.

In the end, I liked the book very much. But if she revisits this world I hope she relies a little less on sentiment to drive the story.



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Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie

It was no surprise that Ancillary Mercy, third book in the Imperial Radch series, got a Nebula nomination.  I had very much enjoyed Ancillary Justice and thought Ancillary Sword was even better.  So I was really looking forward to this one.

It didn't disappoint, but I'd say the series came down from its peak.  In the first novel we had distributed consciousness.  In the second, that consciousness is truncated and the protagonist is forced to go deeper within.  The third sticks with that perspective, and the story plays out.

Fleet Captain Breq Mianaai was sent to Athoek station by one faction of Anaander Mianaai, the dictator of the Radch for 3000 years.  She is now acting independently of all the factions, and is concerning herself mostly with saving the citizens of Athoek.  They are a challenging group, but in the end are pretty ordinary human beings.  The book spends a lot of time on them, to not as great an effect as might be hoped.  The fleet captain is now living openly as an ancillary, formerly part of the ship Justice of Toren.  Eventually she has to confront the splintered dictator, which she does very deftly.  We learn a lot about the emotional states of all involved, even though the common soldiers are somewhat anonymized by their military names--decade and rank within (Bo two, Amaat one, etc).  Thrown into the mix are the much more advanced and totally inscrutable Presger.  The comic relief from the current Translator (the previous one was killed in a misunderstanding) is very welcome.

The book's continued strength is the description of powerful emotions, love, and even sex without gender being a factor.  That got the last installment four stars.

In the end, I can only give this one three.  The story is reasonably interesting but doesn't break much new ground.  The ending is a logical one.  I have noted throughout that the human crews are mostly depicted doing relatively menial tasks--cleaning, providing service, but mostly making tea.  The Ship and Station do the heavy lifting.  This makes the ending logically sensible. 

In sum, we have a series that is highly enjoyable and very much worth reading,  We have some fairly standard tropes--civilization has stayed remarkably stable and unchanging for several thousand years.  At least we have a potential explanation, in that we have near-immortal dictators and AIs that would value stability.  But the speculation on gender is very much worth reading, and yes, it's worthy of awards.  A good read and a good contribution.

Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie

Ancillary Sword is the second book in the Imperial Radch series, and the first of the Nebula award nominated novels I'm reading this year.

The action picks up immediately after the events of the previous book--a piece of Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch, commissions the single unit left of Justice of Toren as a Fleet Commander and sends her to the system where the sister of her late captain is living.  The book centers on events around how Justice of Toren, now Breq Mianaai, dispenses justice and handles events on the station.  It's a challenging assignment, since all gates have been closed due to the civil war.

The action in the book builds slowly, though it does get there, and we conclude with some interesting plot revelations for how the series will continue.  The real story is in the relationships between the lone ancillary, the AIs instantiated in her ship and the station, and the rest of her crew.  The protagonist, being an ancillary, has a high level of access to each crew member's condition through the Ship.  So she pretty much sees everything coming.  She manages with subtlety.

What's really interesting to me is Leckie's very consistent voice and use of language.  The protagonist is uniquely detached, on account of not being human, but still has deep feelings that are consistently from that non-human perspective. 

Another fascinating aspect of the series is Leckie's ability to tell a story from a point of view where gender simply doesn't matter.  There's no support for it in the Radchaai language, so everyone's a "she", and family relationships always manage to be singular so that the gender is not apparent.  The names are thoroughly ungendered as well.  She throws in places where the gender differences do matter, just enough to make it clear how much they don't matter elsewhere.

For storytelling, this is three stars, but for the achievement in social speculation through use of language, I give her four stars.

Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie

Distributed consciousness is probably an underutilized  trope in SF--it's a lot of fun if done well.  The best example I know of is Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, which included a doglike species where an individual was a pack. Ancillary Justice is centered completely on this concept, taking it to another level and exploring it thoroughly.

The novel is pretty much straight up space opera.  There's some interesting social speculation here--the protagonist is a citizen (sort of) of the Radch, a galactic civilization that until recently was completely devoted to expansion.  They are pretty ruthless about the process, but direct and fairly honest.  At the time of the novel they have been stopped by the Presger, and our protagonist is working on the last colonizing "annexation".

The protagonist herself (gender is not a factor in the Radch, the default is "her") is an Ancillary, a person whose individuality has been removed and is now part of a group consciousness, usually a part of a Ship.  Our protagonist is the sole survivor of this Ship's disaster.

I'd say the work is a little subdued for a space opera, but the exploration of distributed consciousness and imperialist social structures is worth the read.  Have fun and think a little.  Three stars from me.