Reviews with content warning for Child death - Ancillary Justice

I've been picking this book up in my local Waterstones, reading the first chapter, deciding it sounds cool and then putting it back for a couple years now and decided to finally get it as a present to myself.

This book is a strange one - taking place in a universe that contains a vast intergalactic empire headed by a leader whose rule is absolute and clones themself and has some kind of hive mind situation going on. Also gender who? - the Raadchai don't do gender and in a refreshing turn of events use the pronoun 'she for everyone. I have come across gender neutral/agender characters before (the Fool from Robin Hobb's 'Farseer' series is the best example I can think of) but 'he' is used as the default pronoun which kind of blots out that aspect of the character - although in newer works 'they' or neopronouns are sometimes used which avoid this. Using 'she' as default is not something I've come across before and initially I thought it would come across in that kind of annoyingly overstated "#GIRLPOWER" way but it's fine. It does result in some double takes when characters are accidentally misgendered but I found it very interesting to read. I think we generally place wayyyy too much importance on gender - although I'm not about to take much life advice from the Raadchai as lack of gender aside every other aspect of their society is kind of yikes and they have a worrying tendency to commit horrible war crimes.

The book takes place over two time lines, almost twenty years apart, and while I generally don't get on well with that format ('Haze' by L.E. Modesitt, one of my least liked books I have chosen to read has a dual time format almost exactly the same as this book) I really enjoyed it here. Leckie has interesting things happen in both timelines (wowee!) and when things begin to kick off it happens in the present time rather than the past, as I find usually happens in this kind of book, which was much more exciting as you have no way of knowing how it is going to be resolved.

I'm finding it difficult to put into words how good I think this book is - I haven't even touched on the interesting world building details that are scattered about and make me want to know more or how the more you think about this book the more you realise. It is obvious from the beginning that the past time line is going to go poorly but how it does and the impact it does - or rather doesn't have - makes you think. Also the characters make the mistakes of people that don't know what their future holds rather than puppets that the author is directing which makes the events feel particularly real.

It is just a very good book and while I'm not sure how the rest of the trilogy will match it I'm looking forward to finding out!

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