Provenance

This book is a spin off from the Ancillary Justice trilogy.

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Like the other spin-off, Translation State, it gives us a closer look into one of the alien species defined in the trilogy, which is cool. But, like Translation State, this not a space opera, it’s a love story wrapped in a caper.

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This book also has a jumble of awkward pronouns: ‘e’, ‘eir’, ’nuncle’, ‘mx', etc. Which might have been okay if the author would have told us what the difference is between an uncle and nuncle, or between Mr and Mx.

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I like that writers of stories are making attempts to go beyond the rigidity of only two genders, but do us the favor of telling us what the new pronouns signify.

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I liked that the two love stories happening in the story are both same-sex. I like that the ending we expect isn’t the one we get. I like that we are forced to visualize beings unlike anything previously imagined.

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What I didn’t like is that the story was implausible. Friendly soldiers, violence in which no one gets really hurt, hardened space dudes open to being fast friends with strangers, parental figures who change their fundamental personality in the final scene, commanders of the invading forces not shooting people they are terrifically annoyed by.

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There are so many moments where the plot goes soft that it’s tough to believe it was written by the same author who wrote the Ancillary Justice trilogy.

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I didn’t highlight a single paragraph in this book to share because at no point in reading this did I think, “Ooo, nice passage."

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This is a good book to read on the beach.

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