A review by qalminator
Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear

5.0

Lovely space opera that turns a great number of common tropes on their head, then spins them around gleefully. We have a somewhat collectivist society in the Synarche, where people regulate their brain chemistry via a device called a "fox" (which also lets them access whatever the internet is called and interface with equipment, and so on). Then there's Freeport, an individualist society consisting mostly of pirates, apparently (we only see pirates from there, anyway).

Most SF like this would focus on Freeport as, oh, the last bastion of rugged individuality and freedom. Not Ancestral Night. There is more freedom in the regulation of the Synarche, especially given its emphasis on consent. Meanwhile, the one representative from Freeport has a bomb implanted in her, so that she continues to obey. The Synarche does its best to take care of all "systers" (sapients, sentients, sophonts are other words I've seen for the concept), while Freeport appears to value dog-eat-dog dynamics (again, based on the lone representative from there). Lovely reversal. I particularly liked that

Spoiler

Farweather deactivating Dz's Fox to reveal "the horrible truth" did not have anything like the trope-expected effect; first, it debilitated her for several days, then, after she integrated the information and had time to process, she realized she would have made the same choices now, and, yes, the replacement memories were a choice.

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The one thing that bothered me turned out all right in the end.

Spoiler

There's a moment where Dz thinks that her crewmates and cats have been killed in a ship explosion. There are hints throughout that at least the AI survived. Eventually we find out that the cats are also okay. I would have been very upset if they hadn't been.