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A review by everybody
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
4.0
This is a deeply flawed book but parts of it are so outstanding that I could easily see past its many problems.
What makes this book so excellent is the deep and consistent characterization and the complex political intrigue. The characters all play amazing 4d chess within a strict authoritarian hierarchy.
The book also did an admirable job of portraying intricate cultures and their complex interactions.
This part sometimes even went a bit too far into the weeds and at times could become a bit boring in the sheer amount of detail which added nothing to the story itself.
The third major strength is the exceedingly complex emotional landscape of the main characters which nonetheless always feels understandable and consistent.
The biggest weakness is the actual sci-fi world-building. The author tends to make up fictional technologies without fully considering what implications such technologies should have on society and scarcity. It's the classic problem with a lot of sci-fi where the technology should solve basically all of the core problems the different populations suffer under but it somehow doesn't.
If you stop and think about these kinds of details basically the entire world and the story fall in on themselves. The only way to enjoy this book is to just ignore these major weaknesses.
At least the book doesn't even try to come up with some incredibly contrived reasons for why things are this way. It just passes over all of it without any explanation.
A few other minor criticisms I have are first, the two timelines. We switch between the MC's past and the present frequently to fill in details about the MC as the story progresses. This can be an effective story-telling tool but in this case, the sheer societal and cultural complexity as well as the number of characters to remember is basically doubled because in both timelines we are bombarded with lots of characters and cultural concepts very rapidly.
This leads to my second minor criticism. The names. The book tries so hard to build convincing cultures that we are flooded with very strange and similar-sounding names constantly. None of them even relate to anything close to normal modern names which compounds the issue manyfold. At first, I even had trouble reliably separating cultural terms from names because many of them are culturally related which is reflected in the terminology. On the one hand, I really admire the dedication that went into building such a complex multicultural world but on the other, it's just too much and doesn't add enough to the story to justify the level of complexity.
One last very minor complaint I have are the songs. This might not have been such a problem in text form but when listening to the audiobook these got very repetitive and annoying. If I have to listen to something going around one more time I might blow a gasket.
To finish the review I also want to briefly mention the second book which I have completed at the time of writing as well. The second book sadly doesn't cater nearly as effectively to the strengths of the author and many of the world-building flaws become a lot more apparent and some of them even are immediately relevant to the story. It also suffers from a few new flaws like bad pacing that I would ascribe to a lack of care or time in writing it. So if you love this first one, be aware that the second one is not quite on par with this one in terms of quality.
In conclusion, while this review might sound really negative, keep in mind the 4/5 star rating which I stand by. This is an excellent book despite its flaws.
What makes this book so excellent is the deep and consistent characterization and the complex political intrigue. The characters all play amazing 4d chess within a strict authoritarian hierarchy.
The book also did an admirable job of portraying intricate cultures and their complex interactions.
This part sometimes even went a bit too far into the weeds and at times could become a bit boring in the sheer amount of detail which added nothing to the story itself.
The third major strength is the exceedingly complex emotional landscape of the main characters which nonetheless always feels understandable and consistent.
The biggest weakness is the actual sci-fi world-building. The author tends to make up fictional technologies without fully considering what implications such technologies should have on society and scarcity. It's the classic problem with a lot of sci-fi where the technology should solve basically all of the core problems the different populations suffer under but it somehow doesn't.
If you stop and think about these kinds of details basically the entire world and the story fall in on themselves. The only way to enjoy this book is to just ignore these major weaknesses.
At least the book doesn't even try to come up with some incredibly contrived reasons for why things are this way. It just passes over all of it without any explanation.
A few other minor criticisms I have are first, the two timelines. We switch between the MC's past and the present frequently to fill in details about the MC as the story progresses. This can be an effective story-telling tool but in this case, the sheer societal and cultural complexity as well as the number of characters to remember is basically doubled because in both timelines we are bombarded with lots of characters and cultural concepts very rapidly.
This leads to my second minor criticism. The names. The book tries so hard to build convincing cultures that we are flooded with very strange and similar-sounding names constantly. None of them even relate to anything close to normal modern names which compounds the issue manyfold. At first, I even had trouble reliably separating cultural terms from names because many of them are culturally related which is reflected in the terminology. On the one hand, I really admire the dedication that went into building such a complex multicultural world but on the other, it's just too much and doesn't add enough to the story to justify the level of complexity.
One last very minor complaint I have are the songs. This might not have been such a problem in text form but when listening to the audiobook these got very repetitive and annoying. If I have to listen to something going around one more time I might blow a gasket.
To finish the review I also want to briefly mention the second book which I have completed at the time of writing as well. The second book sadly doesn't cater nearly as effectively to the strengths of the author and many of the world-building flaws become a lot more apparent and some of them even are immediately relevant to the story. It also suffers from a few new flaws like bad pacing that I would ascribe to a lack of care or time in writing it. So if you love this first one, be aware that the second one is not quite on par with this one in terms of quality.
In conclusion, while this review might sound really negative, keep in mind the 4/5 star rating which I stand by. This is an excellent book despite its flaws.