Ancillary Justice

Book 1 in the Imperial Radch space opera trilogy

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This book took me effort to read. 40% of the way in, I felt I didn’t truly understand the nuance and the motivation for what was happening, so I put it down for a while to read something else.

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As I was reading the other book, I could feel myself trying to make sense of this one in the back of my mind. I decided to begin this book again from the beginning. So worth it.

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The second time around, I was able to make sense of the narrator, who looks and acts so human she fools other humans, but who is really an AI made of panels of her ship's hull.

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The author has spoken of her challenge in getting that first person voice right. She said the fact that the AI has many bodies allowed her to skirt the major limitation of having a first-person narrator.

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As far as my reading extends, this is a unique perspective and one that is very clever, considering this is Ann Leckie’s first novel.

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Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.

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The entire time I was reading this, I felt as if the writing was like a brutalist building. It's all hard angles and unforgiving materials. I had a hard time getting into it. But now that I’ve read the whole thing, I feel that this type of writing is perfect for the Radch Empire.

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I love that every single person in this story is a she. Which is not to say that every person's gender is female, no, there are males in the story, but the default pronoun is "she". WHAT LIBERATION. I'd like to ask the men who have read this book what it felt like, inside your head, to accept that the default human is female.

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When I read a book in which the default human is male and which assumes the reader is male, it creates an internal dialog that distracts from the writing. I can’t help but fix the pronouns in my head which slows me down and creates frustration. It was delightful to be able to relax that part of my brain.

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Like any other citizen she would wonder, even if only at the back of her mind, what, if anything, that might mean. And she being who she was, the back of her mind was a substantial thing.

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The scope and breadth of this story is so broad that goes beyond the three-book trilogy to include two additional short stories and another novel (published in 2023).

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I look forward to continuing the story in the next book because this book didn’t bring any kind resolution.

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The battle we were expecting doesn’t happen. Instead, the ending opens up a new horizon, pulling the fight across time and space.

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A very good book!

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