Reviews

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

nerdynatreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective tense slow-paced

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

2.5

 Oof alright, so the idea of this was pretty good, but the biggest letdown for me was I felt nothing for the characters, and as a character-based reader, I need a little of that. Breq was interesting, but I just didn’t feel much personality from her and then as the book continued, what little was there didn’t seem consistent. She’s a cold character, which makes sense, given that she’s a former A.I. that has been removed from a hivemind, but that made it really hard for me to be invested in her story and what her plans were in the present timeline. 

I much preferred the past timeline to the present, as it felt like more of the world-building was happening there and I was pretty intrigued by it, but the plot was slow moving for me, so I started to drag due to boredom. If I don’t have characters to engage with, I gotta have a fun and fast plot, but this did neither. 

Then the fact that the main character in the present timeline is an entire ship and multiple single-bodied beings attached to a hive mind made for some confusing shifts in perspective, though I was impressed with the author’s writing of this whole situation. It did take me almost the whole book to figure out how I should be visualizing the ships. I actually think including schematics within the book would have been super helpful. 

Finally, while the fact that the Radch’s singular pronoun is ‘she’ was a cool element of their species to spark some commentary, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this A.I. being which has interacted with countless species and cultures, fluent in numerous languages, would continue to misgender people after being told? I think pointing out that different species and cultures have different signifiers for genders and Breq’s having to guess at other characters' genders made sense in the context, but being corrected and then continuing to misgender seemed a little out of touch. 

Honestly, I think my rating for this book just comes down to the fact that the writing style wasn’t for me. Elements were interesting, but the execution is pretty outside my usual tastes, so this rating is very much a “it was not for me” 2 stars. 

moki's review against another edition

4.0

Fun read, although sometimes I think the dense plot got a little messy and too convoluted for itself, especially in the last third. Justice of Toren/Breq is a fun protagonist. Love the use of 'her' as a gender-neutral pronoun; feels like a direct response to Le Guin, which is very fun.

Prose is functional without being beautiful. Lots of 2d characters, but they don't need to be; Justice of Toren does a lot of the work. Really interesting concepts. Will be continuing the series!

alex_bl's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

sensormellow's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

2.75

noamcompsky's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

mikehuffman's review against another edition

adventurous tense medium-paced

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

4.0

I think this is better as a physical read rather than an audiobook

rahkimvz's review against another edition

challenging

4.0

crystalstarrlight's review against another edition

Bullet Review:

DNF at 32% or Chapter 10.

Guys, I hate to DNF books, particularly ones I'm buddy reading with my friends, but I've avoided this book for a good solid 9 days, with at least two of those days being flights in which I actually started a completely different book. I just can't pretend to try to read anymore; I am done.

This is not to say this isn't a "good" book; I can definitely see people liking this (am thinking of one friend in particular, whom I love to discuss books with, though we could probably count the books we both love on one hand). But I'm done. I'm done with the time hops. I'm done with trying to figure out what this world is like. I'm done with trying to figure out if a character is male or female (which, admittedly, shows me that I am VERY cisgendered and need to open my mind about these things - but still, frustrating to read the narrator use "she" and another character use "he" and to have MASSIVE introspections on what gender a character is). I'm done trying to figure out what the point of the book is - hell, I really don't even know, and I'm nearly 1/3 of the way through it!

BUT again, this is just me. I think Leckie's book is probably what we need right now - a book challenging our perception of gender, of giving a whole new perspective on science fiction, being a voice of a woman in a VERY male dominated genre, and showing that women can write good scifi without relying on a romance. (Not that there's anything wrong with scifi romance BTW - "The Mad Scientist's Daughter" is probably one of my favorite books, and you could easily categorize it as scifi romance should you have the inkling.)

I read books for enjoyment or to learn something. While I definitely learned something in this book, I also know I'm not enjoying reading. I need to switch to something I *am* enjoying or else, why bother reading?

happycactus's review against another edition

4.0

Romanzo scritto magistralmente bene, interessante e che credo non soffra di tutte quelle pecche di cui molti lo accusano; una su tutte, il fatto di passare dal maschile al femminile: si tratta di un espediente narrativo, abbastanza lampante peraltro, occorre davvero poco per comprenderlo.
Di contro, a mio modesto e personalissimo avviso, manca di un qualche "quid" che lo renda "memorabile", perché ci sono moltissimi dialoghi, ma pochissima azione, che meriterebbe decisamente. Ma è puramente gusto personale.
Mi sento di consigliarlo.

starrygal's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

Really fun sci-fi read that got me hooked pretty early on. I'm excited to see what comes next from this series.