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multiplekittens 's review for:
Translation State
by Ann Leckie
I don’t normally write reviews on here, but I received this book early through a goodreads giveaway. I want to practice good ARC etiquette™, so here goes! This is a spoiler-free review of Translation State.
As far as spoilers for Ann Leckie’s other books go, the political backdrop relies really heavily on the ending of Ancillary Mercy, so I don’t think I’d give this book to anyone who hasn’t read the original three. It does contain spoilers for the ending of Provenance as well, but much less prominently; I would still recommend reading Provenance before starting this novel, but it’s not as essential to read beforehand.
It’s hard for me to be objective about anything Ann Leckie writes, because I loved the Radch trilogy so much, but: I loved this book. The peek into whatever the hell is going on with Presger Translators, the weird gross body horror romance, the worldbuilding of the universe outside the Radch… good as hell!!!!! Translation State is definitely more political/legal than action-packed, but it really worked for me. I liked the protagonists very much: Enae’s beaten-down competence, Qven’s matter-of-fact horrifying urges, and Reet’s lonely also-horrifying urges all made for captivating characters. Also, Reet spends a lot of time watching a show called Pirate Exiles of the Death Moons, and I’m dying for a Murderbot crossover here. As a whole, I found the novel remarkably heartwarming for a book with this much talk of vivisection, cannibalism, melting into goo, etc!
It wouldn’t be a Leckie book without at least some Gender, of course. The original Radch trilogy has some of the most thoughtful writing on cultural gender differences I’ve encountered. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when completely alien cultures are able to immediately and seamlessly understand the gender of every other alien they come across. The idea that a completely separate culture’s construction of gender would be similar enough to ours that a few sentences of explanation would be enough to completely internalize and apply that construction to strangers is ludicrous; that’s not even something people in real life can do in their own culture! The original Radch trilogy does a great job of allowing the protagonist to experience visible gender friction in a way very few other books are able to. Translation State offers up a different set of gendered cultural expectations, this time using five different sets of pronouns (that I counted) in addition to the Radchaai “she” we’re more used to. I’ve seen some complaints that all these different sets of pronouns make things confusing; I challenge the people who wrote those complaints to consider that maybe that confusion is the point. Translation state covers a lot of important topics – identity, family, belonging, goo – and gender is part of that. Someone in this book asks, "Do I maybe have a gender?" And this is a question I think we should all be asking ourselves.
As far as spoilers for Ann Leckie’s other books go, the political backdrop relies really heavily on the ending of Ancillary Mercy, so I don’t think I’d give this book to anyone who hasn’t read the original three. It does contain spoilers for the ending of Provenance as well, but much less prominently; I would still recommend reading Provenance before starting this novel, but it’s not as essential to read beforehand.
It’s hard for me to be objective about anything Ann Leckie writes, because I loved the Radch trilogy so much, but: I loved this book. The peek into whatever the hell is going on with Presger Translators, the weird gross body horror romance, the worldbuilding of the universe outside the Radch… good as hell!!!!! Translation State is definitely more political/legal than action-packed, but it really worked for me. I liked the protagonists very much: Enae’s beaten-down competence, Qven’s matter-of-fact horrifying urges, and Reet’s lonely also-horrifying urges all made for captivating characters. Also, Reet spends a lot of time watching a show called Pirate Exiles of the Death Moons, and I’m dying for a Murderbot crossover here. As a whole, I found the novel remarkably heartwarming for a book with this much talk of vivisection, cannibalism, melting into goo, etc!
It wouldn’t be a Leckie book without at least some Gender, of course. The original Radch trilogy has some of the most thoughtful writing on cultural gender differences I’ve encountered. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when completely alien cultures are able to immediately and seamlessly understand the gender of every other alien they come across. The idea that a completely separate culture’s construction of gender would be similar enough to ours that a few sentences of explanation would be enough to completely internalize and apply that construction to strangers is ludicrous; that’s not even something people in real life can do in their own culture! The original Radch trilogy does a great job of allowing the protagonist to experience visible gender friction in a way very few other books are able to. Translation State offers up a different set of gendered cultural expectations, this time using five different sets of pronouns (that I counted) in addition to the Radchaai “she” we’re more used to. I’ve seen some complaints that all these different sets of pronouns make things confusing; I challenge the people who wrote those complaints to consider that maybe that confusion is the point. Translation state covers a lot of important topics – identity, family, belonging, goo – and gender is part of that. Someone in this book asks, "Do I maybe have a gender?" And this is a question I think we should all be asking ourselves.