Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

7 reviews

shottel's review against another edition

adventurous reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

What a goddamn amazing book.

Sci-fi has a mold, sets of well-worn tropes that make it comforting and familiar. Leckie is very comfortable with taking you well outside that mold. It somewhat resembles Star Wars in that it presents a world so far off, in time and space, from our own that it has morphed into something with science we simply couldn’t recognize. But while Star Wars smuggles fantasy into sci-fi, Ancillary Justice trades in exotic political systems and societies.

What happens when one person can be many people? When an AI can control numerous bodies? When time begins to become less and less meaningful with medical and technological advancements? Things definitely begin to look a little sideways.

It’s in this world full of unfamiliar, society-defining technologies that Leckie explores several big themes: What does it mean to be civilized, or to exist in civilization? What makes a person? What makes a political system legitimate? What does gender or sex mean when technologically-assisted reproduction is commonplace? Is the self a coherent unity or is it just a useful fiction? Taking on these big questions in less than 400 pages of fiction is a huge ask, one that Leckie handles mostly well; my sole critique of Ancillary Justice is that sometimes it does get a bit in-your-face about its philosophical questions. I love thoughtful fiction, but Leckie does get a little unsubtle at times.

Nevertheless, this is an absolutely genre-defining piece of fiction, innovative and engaging as it comes. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in sci-fi or philosophically-minded fiction.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Violence, Classism, Death, Cultural appropriation, Gun violence, War, Racism, Addiction, and Colonisation

Moderate: Religious bigotry, Injury/Injury detail, and Slavery

Minor: Forced institutionalization, Suicide, Rape, and Sexual assault

booksthatburn's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

5.0

ANCILLARY JUSTICE is a story of slow burn revenge by a segment of a colonial empire against its leader. It deals with personhood, gendered language, and sliding scales of ethics in colonial forces. It doesn't propose to have obvious or easy answers to any of these questions, but it excels in coming at them sideways. One of the most obvious elements of this is the way the protagonist engages with gendered language. Her first language doesn't use gendered pronouns, so she defaults to "she" (or that language's equivalent) for everyone, unless she is specifically told another gender reference. At minimum, for someone like myself reading in English it creates the impression of a world filled with women, even if they're not. Her constant misgendering marks her as an outsider even to those who don't know she's an Ancillary. As a physical extension of a spaceship's AI, put into human bodies for seamless operation, the nature of her existence is the subject of many discussions about slavery, autonomy, and personhood. Each of her bodies had a history before they became part of her, and she is uninterested in anyone's attempts to kill her in order to get that person back. This seems like the kind of thing later books might explore more, but the foundations are laid for now with various debates and conversations as to exactly what kind of colonial forces are to be preferred: one where bodies are replaced with ancillaries of a ship (effectively killing them), or one where individual humans are left their own personalities and might engage in assault of various kinds against the people in their charge. Is the soldier who has already been killed better than the one who will randomly rape the populace? The answer of stopping colonization altogether has already occurred to someone, to be sure, but this is a story where changes take time, and the last body of a several-thousand-year-old ship is content to set up the pieces of her revenge slowly. 

I enjoyed this and I'm very interested in where things go from here. I like the questions raised nearly as much as I appreciate not being given trite answers. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism

Moderate: Religious bigotry, Grief, Racism, Drug abuse, Violence, Gun violence, Murder, Xenophobia, Drug use, Slavery, Colonisation, and Death

Minor: Grief, Vomit, Alcohol, Rape, and War

fmcphaden's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The first book in one of the most sophisticated sci-fi trilogies I’ve ever encountered. Crosses several sub genres. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, War, Blood, Classism, Medical content, Murder, Addiction, Xenophobia, Death, Deportation, Colonisation, Drug abuse, Genocide, Grief, Gun violence, Alcohol, and Violence

Moderate: Body horror, Mental illness, Bullying, Police brutality, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Toxic relationship, Cultural appropriation, Suicidal thoughts, and Vomit

jjjreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Sexual violence, Toxic friendship, Xenophobia, Confinement, Ableism, Classism, Genocide, Police brutality, Self harm, Suicide, Transphobia, Addiction, Racism, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Death, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Slavery, War, Body horror, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Drug abuse, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Suicide attempt, and Vomit

emilyplun's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Addiction, and Colonisation

Moderate: Racism, Police brutality, Genocide, Gun violence, and Drug abuse

queenie_ofthe_void's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

So hard to read. Like Harrow the Ninth hard. The AI flashback chapters with multiple shifting POVs was a huge challenge. The POV being an AI character made it feel like instances of an unreliable narrator. For example, character descriptions from an AI perspective weren't normal literary depictions, so as a imaginative reader it was hard to form a normal picture.

All of that being said, it was an extremely interesting read. The characters were very well-defined, the plot was intriguing and original. Awesome twists! The beginning was a bit of a drag, but the end picked up so fast I immediately rented the next book in the series. I think it'll be like LOTR, where Fellowship is 90% set up and the rest is faster paced.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Violence, Cultural appropriation, Death, Drug abuse, War, Grief, Colonisation, Racism, Addiction, and Torture

fiveredhens's review against another edition

reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism, Slavery, Medical trauma, and Medical content