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crufts's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
On the first reading: Well, this is a cool idea, but I'm having a little trouble following. What is the main character, really? A ship, a robot, a person—? Huh? And there are so many named characters with weird sci-fi names that are hard to remember and tell apart, who are all these people?? And wait, did that happen in the present or in the past, and was that past 20 years ago or 500 years ago or 1000 years ago??? And what's with the ending?
On the second reading: Ohhhh, now I get it! Okay, this is really neat!
In a science-fiction world of stars and planets, the expansionist Radch empire grows ever stronger. The most powerful tools of their military are the ancillaries: the living bodies of prisoners of war, now controlled by the AIs of Radch warships, and whom their enemies refer to as "corpse soldiers".
The title of Ancillary Justice is a play on words: it's the military title of the protagonist (Breq), who is an ancillary of the military spaceship Justice of Toren; but it's also the plot of the novel, as Breq pursues justice against the Lord of the Radch.
As noted above, my first reading of the novel left me rather confused. Information such as Breq's true nature, her origin, her backstory, her motivation and goals, and her connection with Captain Seivarden (the deuteragonist) are doled out in dribs and drabs through a narrative that switches between the present and the past on every second chapter. These switches of time are not explicitly marked in the text and are only identifiable from context clues. This was very confusing until I got into the swing of it on the re-read.
The plot of the "present day" story is actually quite simple, without a huge number of plot points; instead, it's the mystery and buildup of this past backstory (with all those characters with wacky sci-fi names) that provides the bulk of the novel. Again, this is something I was able to appreciate more on the second reading, when I was better able to tell all the lieutenants and captains apart.
Breq tells the story via her first-person point of view. However, something else that made the story harder to follow is that Breq refers to all characters as "she", reflecting her native Radch language that doesn't distinguish social genders. For the Radch, one's gender (and sex) is as socially irrelevant as the colour of one's eyes, and everyone gets the same personal pronoun (which happens to be "she").
Note that this is not the same as in Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, where the Gethenians are actually physically unisex. The Radch do have visible sex/gender differences, they just don't mark them socially.
This was an interesting bit of sci-fi worldbuilding for the Radch. However, it was also rather confusing as roughly half the characters in the story are male, but Breq still calls them "she". For example, Seivarden is male, and this is apparent to non-Radch characters through her appearance/voice/etc, but the narration refers to Seivarden as "she" (as would Seivarden, if she were referring to herself in the Radch language).
With Breq's unisex pronoun use, I automatically pictured a lot of characters as having female-typical appearances, in conflict with occasional notes of description that they had beards, broad shoulders, deep voices and so on. This made it more difficult to tell characters apart, since this common distinguishing feature (i.e. social gender) was absent from the narration. But even though it made the characters harder to follow, I still think it was a cool worldbuilding idea.
With Breq's unisex pronoun use, I automatically pictured a lot of characters as having female-typical appearances, in conflict with occasional notes of description that they had beards, broad shoulders, deep voices and so on. This made it more difficult to tell characters apart, since this common distinguishing feature (i.e. social gender) was absent from the narration. But even though it made the characters harder to follow, I still think it was a cool worldbuilding idea.
Another interesting choice for the novel was for the protagonist to be a faithful servant of an "evil empire" (i.e., the Radch). This worked out well as it made for a fascinating conflict between Breq's loyalty and her burgeoning identity as a separate person.
Despite my confusion and the need for a re-read, I did enjoy the novel, with my favourite part being the gradual Breq/Seivarden relationship arc from "I can barely stand you" to dear friends who stand by eachother no matter what . It is fairly light as sci-fi goes - maybe just a little heavier sci-fi than Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers - and would be accessible to people who don't read a lot of sc-fi.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Murder, War, Death, and Violence
Moderate: Slavery and Trafficking
Minor: Rape and Sexual assault
Gun violence, Violence, Murder, Death: Several lethal fights occur on-screen, many of them involving sci-fi guns.War: The continual action of the expansionist Radch empire.
Slavery, Trafficking: Arguably, the ancillaries are "slaves", but they do not feel this way since they are inhabited by the minds of the Radch spaceship AIs (the original minds being long gone).
Sexual assault and rape: Mentioned as having occurred during wartime, not in detail.
philamot's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
Ancillary Justice follows the story of an intelligent warship at two different points in its existence, 20 years apart. The switches between timepoints are well-handled and create a coherent story, with neither timepoint handling the bulk of the reveals.
I felt like the non-human intelligence was handled in a really fun way - it was like a semi-omniscient first person narrator, and really affirmed the fact that this was not a human narrator.
The worldbuilding is layered and does not feel like a renamed sci-if version of an Earth culture. Which can be fun, when done well, but I enjoyed novel societies.
One of the most arresting bits of worldbuilding is the adherence to she/her/hers as the default pronouns for a society that did not consider gender a meaningful linguistic or societal marker. A fun inversion from the traditional use of he, and one that still surprised me, as I would assume the use of they/them/theirs. Since the main character was generally confused by gender markers, almost all characters were referred to using she/her/hers. Further, different characters from gendered societies would refer to the same characters with different pronouns - implying to me at least that different cultures had conflicting interpretations of a characters gender markers. Sometimes, it came across as a bit heavy handed, and I’m not sure if using she/her feels like kind of queer or like a doubling down on the binary from the opposite directions. I’m generally a fan though, as I’m into any playing with gender into science fiction tbh.
In general, a fun read! Good for fans of the Murderbot series for sure - read it in about 4 hours on a plane hahaha.
I felt like the non-human intelligence was handled in a really fun way - it was like a semi-omniscient first person narrator, and really affirmed the fact that this was not a human narrator.
The worldbuilding is layered and does not feel like a renamed sci-if version of an Earth culture. Which can be fun, when done well, but I enjoyed novel societies.
One of the most arresting bits of worldbuilding is the adherence to she/her/hers as the default pronouns for a society that did not consider gender a meaningful linguistic or societal marker. A fun inversion from the traditional use of he, and one that still surprised me, as I would assume the use of they/them/theirs. Since the main character was generally confused by gender markers, almost all characters were referred to using she/her/hers. Further, different characters from gendered societies would refer to the same characters with different pronouns - implying to me at least that different cultures had conflicting interpretations of a characters gender markers. Sometimes, it came across as a bit heavy handed, and I’m not sure if using she/her feels like kind of queer or like a doubling down on the binary from the opposite directions. I’m generally a fan though, as I’m into any playing with gender into science fiction tbh.
In general, a fun read! Good for fans of the Murderbot series for sure - read it in about 4 hours on a plane hahaha.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Slavery
Minor: War, Violence, and Sexual assault
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