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A review by outcolder
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
5.0
Most of the second act takes place on a tea plantation and there are some pretty lengthy bits in a favela on a space station! There's still plenty of space ships and A.I.s and a wonderful alien and all that kind of SF type stuff, but I was loving all the plantation action: the aftermath of a strike, the lives and even work songs of the sharecroppers, the abuses. It's the kind of thing I like to read in a non-fiction book. If Leckie had set that on an antebellum southern plantation, or on a contemporary tea plantation in, I don't know, Myanmar or somewheres, then all the righteous and satisfying plot points that she works in this novel would have seemed corny or too easy but by having it all in Radch Space, it works just fine. So I loved that. Really loved that.
The Radch are getting more interesting for me, too. We know they are guilty of thousands of years of one genocide after another. But they, or at least, the good guys in this series, are trying to deal with their past and not be such jerks going forward. There's no reparations, or... there's no collective soul searching, it's more like: yeah, we know it's all built on genocide and slavery but now everybody gets a fair shake, except when they don't while maybe there are people who are like, "we should bring all that genocide and slavery stuff back!" but they might be trying to hide that sentiment from you. I didn't think it was too obvious; it didn't get in the way of the story. So Leckie is able to look at both kinds of that hypocrisy in a cool SF way that I really like. Another contemporary theme she addresses is ubiquitous surveillance.
Also, the space opera-ness is going great, because we learn a bit of the Radch history, hints of the battles that were fought before the tyrant came to power, and some more Radch geography.
I am very excited about the 3rd book, because I love this thing about "the Ghost Gate," on the other side of which is supposedly nothing, except when 3000 year old debris drifts out of it, and that this tyrant figure who is at war with herself is also now a shapeshifter. That all tastes very dark and thrilling. Also I guess we can expect more Presger, the inscrutable aliens. She gets around having to describe bug-eyed monsters or over simplifying translation issues by just having the aliens able to occupy a human body but then she stills knocks it out of the park with making the character feel very alien. If the Presger were in a Star Trek episode, it would be a fan favorite. I am a little nervous about the final book in the trilogy as well as being excited, because there are so many cool questions just hanging and maybe she won't tie it all up by the end... but, I guess she can always write more in the same universe...
Conclusion: Awesome.
The Radch are getting more interesting for me, too. We know they are guilty of thousands of years of one genocide after another. But they, or at least, the good guys in this series, are trying to deal with their past and not be such jerks going forward. There's no reparations, or... there's no collective soul searching, it's more like: yeah, we know it's all built on genocide and slavery but now everybody gets a fair shake, except when they don't while maybe there are people who are like, "we should bring all that genocide and slavery stuff back!" but they might be trying to hide that sentiment from you. I didn't think it was too obvious; it didn't get in the way of the story. So Leckie is able to look at both kinds of that hypocrisy in a cool SF way that I really like. Another contemporary theme she addresses is ubiquitous surveillance.
Also, the space opera-ness is going great, because we learn a bit of the Radch history, hints of the battles that were fought before the tyrant came to power, and some more Radch geography.
I am very excited about the 3rd book, because I love this thing about "the Ghost Gate," on the other side of which is supposedly nothing, except when 3000 year old debris drifts out of it, and that this tyrant figure who is at war with herself is also now a shapeshifter. That all tastes very dark and thrilling. Also I guess we can expect more Presger, the inscrutable aliens. She gets around having to describe bug-eyed monsters or over simplifying translation issues by just having the aliens able to occupy a human body but then she stills knocks it out of the park with making the character feel very alien. If the Presger were in a Star Trek episode, it would be a fan favorite. I am a little nervous about the final book in the trilogy as well as being excited, because there are so many cool questions just hanging and maybe she won't tie it all up by the end... but, I guess she can always write more in the same universe...
Conclusion: Awesome.