Reviews

Translation State by Ann Leckie

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all_roses's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious 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

4.5

especiallysarah's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

4.25

n14h8hughes's review

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adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

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

4.25

Conceptually weird and yet strangely readable and loveable. I had a few unanswered questions, but overall enjoyed this a lot, and it kept me thinking. Close enough for interesting overlap with other Imperial Radch books, but stylistically as well as content wise quite different.

bluejaybooks's review against another edition

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Loved this one, but I think that Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy are still my favorite Leckie books. After reading this one, I immediately went back and re-read those two.

I think someone could read this as a standalone without the original trilogy, but that they might be a little confused about some aspects of Radch culture.

Spoiler

My immediate thought while reading these books was that it made Translator Zeiat's comments in the original trilogy make more sense. However, going back and rereading Ancillary Mercy, I don't think Leckie had the translators entirely worked out yet because Translator Zeiat makes comments about things like Translator Dlique having a sister. There are explainable reasons why the translator might discuss having a sister. For example, Zeiat might have felt that the humans wouldn't understand the sorts of relationship expressed by translators and was translating in a way that she thought the humans would understand. However, this seems more like a retconned explanation than one that would have been considered at the time. That said, I don't read minds and could be wrong about that.