Ancillary Justice
The Imperial Radch trilogy, Book 1
Ann Leckie
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For over a thousand years, the artificial intelligence ship Justice of Toren served the imperial Radch, who had brought civilization to countless worlds - often at the end of a gun, the only way the uncivilized heathens seemed to ever learn. Innumerable ancillary bodies performed all manner of tasks, from fighting to maintenance to menial service for its human lieutenants and captains. Justice of Toren never thought to question its orders or its place in the galaxy... until it was betrayed.
Twenty years later, only one ancillary body remains, the soldier known as Breq. Its path to vengeance leads it to a remote outpost beyond the reach of the Radch - and to one of its least favorite former officers, Seivarden, who spent centuries on ice after bungling a routine annexation and is now addicted to a mind-numbing drug. Breq should leave her to her ignoble fate, but the Radchaai do not believe in coincidences, and Seivarden may provide it with the means to finally strike back at the ones who destroyed it.
REVIEW: I can see why this book won multiple awards. Leckie establishes a unique, distinctly non-European interstellar empire with the Radchaai, a culture permeated and poisoned by an unshakable certainty that they alone are the pinnacle of galactic purity, and therefore deserve to conquer and destroy to enrich themselves. This blind certainty enables them to twist their own faith and basic logic into impossible knots to justify any atrocity and injustice, so long as it is committed in their name and for their glory... mental gymnastics that contribute in no small way to the conflict at the heart of the plot, the one that led to Justice of Toren's destruction and ultimate quest for revenge. (I would elaborate, but it would be a spoiler.) Leckie also imbues this culture with a truly unique take on gender and a complex power structure, not to mention the hivelike mentality of its artificial intelligence-driven ships and stations. This is something I haven't quite seen before, and the narrative handles this viewpoint in an interesting yet understandable way.
Where this book lost a star (and darned near two stars) was twofold. First, with a political and social structure as complicated as the Radchaai, the plot also inevitably becomes complicated and borderline convoluted, navigating the various layers of loyalty and treachery, alliances and rivalries. Second, for all that I haven't quite read a character like Breq - once a single segment of a larger whole but now forced to serve as its own master, like a lone ant who outlives the colony and is perpetually a little out of step as it tries to adapt to solitary life - I never quite connected with or cared about it/her (in Radchaai fashion, Breq defaults to "she/her" pronouns, and becomes irritated and confused in cultures that expect one to recognize males and females as different by inconsistent visual or behavioral cues), or about the rest of the cast. They were interesting in the way a jumbled Rubik's cube is interesting, as puzzles to poke at but not things I could intrinsically empathize with or relate to. Also like a Rubik's cube, I determined that actually solving those puzzles was beyond my very limited mental capabilities, though I could still admire the pretty colors and the way they turned and twisted so intriguingly. Still, I had to give Ancillary Justice decent marks for the concepts tackled and the worlds built, none of which leaned on easy tropes or settled for low-hanging fruit, ultimately raising it (if barely) into the Good range. I could admire the scenery and the details, even if this story ultimately isn't my cup of cocoa.
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