thesinginglights's reviews
665 reviews

Oh boy. Ancillary Justice. Lot of hype around this book and pretty much every major SFF award under its belt. Oh, and did I mention that it's a debut? Worthy accolades so early on. It's also a book that's not particularly prone to really explaining absolutely every aspect of the tale, a common bane of many great SFF writers. It's not as though you get nothing--it does explain a lot of things--but you really have to focus and pick up details for yourself and pay attention. I imagine it's a more rewarding trip the second time around.

So now you might be asking yourselves why the three stars. Well, for all its uniqueness, it does suffer a bit. Let me get into it.

The Good

Breq/One Esk/Justice of Toren was a wonderfully realised protagonist. The prose is brisk and deceptively simple but underneath is a whole range of experiences and nuance. The tone of the prose is very cool and removed, as we would expect from a first-person perspective of an AI, but again underneath there is clear emotional life in Breq, albeit different to our own somewhat. Our story starts off in the present day and details Breq a ship's AI named Justice of Toren. Ship AIs observe every detail of their crews and manage all the mundane tasks you would expect. Now the AI, for a more hands-on approach, are filtered through human bodies called "ancillaries" (or corpse soldiers by people who are not part of the dominant galactic power, the Radch). These act as the eyes and ears for ships and allow for simultaneous communication and experiences. One of the ancillaries is named One Esk (Nineteen, I think), now going by Breq, and an act of treachery has destroyed all she was before, leaving her just a solitary body and a hunger for revenge. For someone (or thing) whose primary purpose was to be spread across multiple bodies, this is pretty disorienting.

The plot of book alternates for about 70% of the novel between Breq in the present day and Justice of Toren's heyday, about 20 years prior.

An interesting thing is the treatment of gender in the book. The Radchaai (the dominant, world-conquering superpower) do not differentiate gender in their language, as well as their culture. Gender is exceptionally fluid and so it seems they have no need of differentiating pronouns. The text uses "she" and "her" as gender-neutral substitutes. In the early stages I often found myself trying to figure "man or woman?" but towards the end I stopped and allowed myself to understand that's not of massive concern (although some characters are given clear identifiers). This does cause Breq some pains in trying to use appropriate pronouns outside of Radch space. A little confusing to begin with but you soon get into the groove.

The strength of this book derives from this idea of a ship's AI and the idea of multiple bodies. Across the novel interesting ideas about identity are satisfyingly eked out. In many of the scenes in the past Leckie has set herself the difficult task of trying to explain what it's like to be a seemingly unitary consciousness split across multiple bodies each doing their own thing. I think for the task set upon her she succeeded. It does require some focus on the part of the reader but not in a sense that detracts too much from the experience. In fact, since we're here, the real powerhouse of this book is the execution of the Justice of Toren as Justice of Toren storyline. The last chapters in this sequence were especially compelling for their pacing and characterisation, and are definitely the highlight of this book.

Other cool things were the different cultural aspects of Radchaai with bits of things pertaining to language. Overall, the multiple bodies was a particularly striking concept that was both explored and executed well.

The Bad

So this book is divided in two, as we've established. The present storyline is a revenge story; our protagonist is going to hunt the bastard who made her less of what she is now. Excellent motivations for a classic revenge plot. Unfortunately ... we don't really get all that much in the way of actually moving plot. I'll keep it spoiler free, but for a while Breq has been hunting for the means to exact her revenge. It just so happens that this quest has taken her the better part of 19 years (the 'Verse is a big place, let's not mince words here). That's not my issue. My issue is the surprising amount of focus to the extremely dull Seivarden. The beginning sequence sees Breq pulling him out of a ship's wreckage. She doesn't even know why (I don't, either, to honest)! Over the next hundred or so pages (close to two) we get a drug-addled man who offers nothing much in the way of the plot. Some expansions of the world itself in terms of their significance to the Radch Empire's history but they do little else but moan or follow Breq like a dog. Honestly, by the end, I found myself being bored by him. In fact, the characters overall, barring Breq, a dusting of secondary characters, as well as the antagonist, are particularly uninteresting. I found myself having little concern over their general well-being. Lieutenant Awn in the past story was much more compelling and I wondered why Leckie didn't develop her present cast to that same quality. Also, the story didn't progress for the longest of time. It was sluggishly paced and I was clamouring for more about Lieutenant Awn in the colonies. The last third of it was rewarding but not merely enough to justify how long it took to limp along.

There's enough in it that I'd come back for more but I feel like some oversights with the plotting that I hope get rectified. With the high-concept space opera stuff, Leckie thrives. I'm very glad that her unique ideas succeeded. She shows demonstrable power with characterisation but it's very uneven. I'm hoping that the next book will balance things a bit more, but I could see myself going the whole nine yards with Breq and her story. I'd also be intrigued as to what Leckie will write after her trilogy.

So the concept of this book was an interesting one to me. In short, a role reversal: what if women had the power instead of men? Power being quite literal. Imagine a parallel earth in the present day, but there's been a latent mutation that starts to manifest in young women in the form of electricity that can be shot from their hands. Older women can't generate it naturally but can use it if a young woman awakens it in them. This is our setting.

What happens is the unravelling of social order and the rise of women's rebellion across the globe, them taking the power. Are you seeing it? It's allegory. There are four main (and a couple of others off the top of my head) perspectives that act as the observers of the world. Beyond that, though, there's not much to say about them. They exist on linear axes without any clearly definable character development. This is disappointing and so the book misses out on some of its potential emotive beats: I didn't massively care for them a great deal.

What we do have, however is some very taught writing and an interesting concept. There's also a lot of violence (unsurprising) and hoo boy quite a bit of rape as well. When you remove the electrical powers and invert the genders, you're looking into the mirror of our world which makes the violence that much more bone-chilling. The allegory is cleverly told but it has, sad to say, not amazing characters. Overall, a good, but not great, book.

Spoiler

Bonus points for framing it as a fictional historical novel.

Dare I say that it's the most fun that I've had so far? Yeah, why not? I don't think I need to add to the myriad voices of those who read it but in light of the speed of The Fellowship of the Ring (i.e. not very quick at all--aaagh Tom Bombadil) it was pleasant for it to kick off straight away. Then again it's just an added slice of a single, sizeable book but blahblahblah.

Book Three started off well and continued to do so as we follow the broken Fellowship's (Strider and Co) journey after Merry and Pippin and then to Rohan. Considering how laboured the travelling can be (because it is more than a bit detailed when it comes to journeying but in a way shows how bloody big the world is) I was actually surprised that the battle of Helm's Deep was wrapped up--done deal, sign there, there and there, please--in a chapter! Following that, the chapter named The Voice of Saruman was brilliant; it's basically where they slag Saruman off and he them. After, though it slowed down massively. Merry and Pippin (or in fact Tolkien) don't believe in paraphrasing so their observations of the taking of Isengard are told in full. Eh.

Book Four though. Solid pretty much all the way through. Who doesn't love a bit of Gollum's volatile moods? And Frodo and Sam's bromance? Lovely. Not so expedient shaking Faramir off, who in the book has nowhere near the kind of development that the films had (oops, I said it) but alas, onwards to Mordor and into Shelob's lair and Tolkien switches into some real beautiful and very swift-moving and exciting writing. Could barely put it down.

I think I'll take another break before I snap open The Return of the King, though.

I feel like how I feel at the end of a particularly satisfying film: content and ponderous.

Another Salinger foray into authenticity.

A pretty uninteresting detective story with some pretty interesting philosophy. I was a bit disappointed, to be honest. The set-up is fascinating: futuristic world where there are tensions between humans and extra-planetary Spacers are rife. The two communities are separated: humans cloistered in their caves of steel, large networks of urban area inside instead of how we know them; the Spacers meanwhile are in their own domed communities free from the disease-carrying humans. A robot Spacer is teamed with a human police officer to investigate the death of a (fleshy) Spacer.

Sound good so far? Unfortunately, despite the real and clear animosity the humans have for robots and the philosophical discussions of the nature of reality and the relationship between humans, it was kind of boring. That's a shame, considering the towering influence that Asmiov possesses. Perhaps I started in the wrong place.

A fun and moving conclusion to this arc in Ketterdam. Still a little heavy-handed with backstory in the middle but some meaningful character-developments, and phenomenal worldbuilding. Bardugo continues to grow as a writer, doing away with the issues I had with the momentum of the original Grisha trilogy. I'm itching for more in this world!

And so ends the Pilot of The Wheel of Time. An overlong book crammed to the brim with the worldbuilding, with some clumsy writing and uneven pacing.

The cast and journey was enjoyable and the world is interesting the further away it moves from the obvious Tolkien copying. What was to like was scattered out across the book leading to an interesting ending, if not necessarily satisfying. Overall, I enjoyed it but it's too long by around 200 pages. Looking forward to The Great Hunt, though!

I come out of this book drained. This should have been the kind of book for me--about memory and relationships, in particular loneliness--but I had a difficult time with it, often having to push myself to finish. "It's only 300 pages," I'd tell myself.

So what are we dealing with? It's about many things and nothing--the most mundane things ever. The POVs have a strong connection with writing or the writing process but the various stories are told in a very fragmented and honestly distracting way. I'm certain I didn't pick up on some of the subtleties and the smaller connections with the POVs (beyond the desk) but I was drained going through it all. Part II, the shortest, is the conclusive part and the most satisfying. Krauss' elongated prose is eliminated and there's an economy to the pace. The talk on Jewish diaspora was some of the best writing in the book. I kind of get that, when linked with Krauss' points on diaspora, the structure's fragmented style is kind of the point but I struggled. I really did.

Honestly, when I was reading it, I could only thing about Stone Arabia, which deals with memory much better. My review unpacks it better as it's a layered and moving read, like this was trying to be but sadly failed to; I really want to like Nicole Krauss. Extra star for some really good prose in places.