Scan barcode
murdy's review against another edition
3.0
I would rate the beginning a 2 and the middle to end a four. I can see where so many books I love have been inspired by the ideas of this one, which is why rating it is difficult to me.
I normally really love AI stories. And the AI in this book is cool, but mostly only in the past chapters. Basically in the present, Breq is just a human with ai hive mind memories and implants. Hello borg. Maybe why her name is Breq. The ruler hive mind was a fun idea and kept me invested.
In general the plot was ok. I struggled to get invested until around 60 percent of the way in, and then I was pretty hooked. I admit I skimmed some parts until the middle.
The thought experiment of this novel was basically an exploration of humanities ability to self delude itself. We lie to ourselves. We pretend and twist reality and ignore bad things we do to not feel bad about ourselves. Which is a fun idea to play with when your villain is a hive mind.
What I liked
The action scenes. When there is action happening I was 100 percent invested.
Breq’s motivations. Breq is attached to lieutenant Awn and driven to revenge her. (I wouldn’t be surprised if All Systems Red took inspiration from this for Murderbot and Mensah) Breq and Murderbot are basically the same character in concept.
In fact, I feel like All Systems Red took a lot of inspiration from this novel. They have very similar feeling worlds—though Ancillary Justice is more Ancient Rome and Murderbot is more evil corporations. Both utilize organic AI weapons, both travel in space through gates, and both challenge forms of gender and humanity.
What I didn’t like and why I can’t give this 5 stars
Switching back and forth between past and present every other chapter was annoying. Just often enough I couldn’t get invested in either time.
In general the prose were decent. But the author has a habit of repeating the same words close together which I found distracting.
Most of the dialogue with random side characters. Some of it was info dumping world building—which at least had a point—but much of it was simple talk. “Want to play Tiktik” “what is tiktik?” “You don’t know what tiktik is?” “I do not.” “It’s a game. A children’s game”
In general I found most of the characters to be flat because they passed out of time or plot so fast. Seivarden’s character growth felt rushed. One person in the first half of the book and a new person in the second half. Breq is so unemotional (except when we are told she is angry) I found myself distrustful of her own motivations, if she weren’t still driven by old orders.
The ending. I didn’t really believe that a society structured by class, military, birthed superiority, and unquestioning obedience would so easily turn on their ruler who is basically an undying entity. An entity who can order anyone’s death at any second. In concept the climax was fun and snarky, but in terms of world building it felt very strange.
I’m sure everyone mentions the gendered pronouns and I will too.
While I understand the author was making a statement about gender pronouns, I wish she had used an existing or made up her own gender neutral pronoun than just using “she.” It might be literary but it was annoying for me personally. Character descriptions are brief, and coupled with everyone being a she I just couldn’t remember what anyone looked like. Plus there are a lot of names starting with S and A which added to the confusion.
I’m glad I read it, but it’s not an easy book to get into.
I normally really love AI stories. And the AI in this book is cool, but mostly only in the past chapters. Basically in the present, Breq is just a human with ai hive mind memories and implants. Hello borg. Maybe why her name is Breq. The ruler hive mind was a fun idea and kept me invested.
In general the plot was ok. I struggled to get invested until around 60 percent of the way in, and then I was pretty hooked. I admit I skimmed some parts until the middle.
The thought experiment of this novel was basically an exploration of humanities ability to self delude itself. We lie to ourselves. We pretend and twist reality and ignore bad things we do to not feel bad about ourselves. Which is a fun idea to play with when your villain is a hive mind.
What I liked
The action scenes. When there is action happening I was 100 percent invested.
Breq’s motivations. Breq is attached to lieutenant Awn and driven to revenge her. (I wouldn’t be surprised if All Systems Red took inspiration from this for Murderbot and Mensah) Breq and Murderbot are basically the same character in concept.
In fact, I feel like All Systems Red took a lot of inspiration from this novel. They have very similar feeling worlds—though Ancillary Justice is more Ancient Rome and Murderbot is more evil corporations. Both utilize organic AI weapons, both travel in space through gates, and both challenge forms of gender and humanity.
What I didn’t like and why I can’t give this 5 stars
Switching back and forth between past and present every other chapter was annoying. Just often enough I couldn’t get invested in either time.
In general the prose were decent. But the author has a habit of repeating the same words close together which I found distracting.
Most of the dialogue with random side characters. Some of it was info dumping world building—which at least had a point—but much of it was simple talk. “Want to play Tiktik” “what is tiktik?” “You don’t know what tiktik is?” “I do not.” “It’s a game. A children’s game”
In general I found most of the characters to be flat because they passed out of time or plot so fast. Seivarden’s character growth felt rushed. One person in the first half of the book and a new person in the second half. Breq is so unemotional (except when we are told she is angry) I found myself distrustful of her own motivations, if she weren’t still driven by old orders.
The ending. I didn’t really believe that a society structured by class, military, birthed superiority, and unquestioning obedience would so easily turn on their ruler who is basically an undying entity. An entity who can order anyone’s death at any second. In concept the climax was fun and snarky, but in terms of world building it felt very strange.
I’m sure everyone mentions the gendered pronouns and I will too.
While I understand the author was making a statement about gender pronouns, I wish she had used an existing or made up her own gender neutral pronoun than just using “she.” It might be literary but it was annoying for me personally. Character descriptions are brief, and coupled with everyone being a she I just couldn’t remember what anyone looked like. Plus there are a lot of names starting with S and A which added to the confusion.
I’m glad I read it, but it’s not an easy book to get into.
katiemcvay's review against another edition
5.0
Hard sci-fi isn't typically what I turn to. But I am very glad I gave this book a chance. Breq's world is well-crafted and deep. You can feel it extending beyond the page. The questions asked in the book: about AI, gender, class, and imperialism are interesting and well explored, but don't turn the book into a philosophical exercise. I gasped several times during the book due to the twists and turns. I really loved it.
fclewis's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
simonlitton's review against another edition
2.0
This never really grabbed me. There's some interesting stuff going on in the background which isn't explored in enough detail, and instead we get a set of dull and indistinguishable characters and a murky, uninvoling plot.
mattingtonbear's review against another edition
4.0
an incredible work of science fiction filled to the brim w/ all kinds of unique ideas in a beautifully realized world. it took a lil bit for me to get into this probably b/c there is a lot of ground to cover concept-wise but once the plot kicks in I couldn't put this book down. seriously this book is something else.
winterbinding's review against another edition
4.0
Sci-fi at some of its finest. Ancillary Justice is the story of Breq, an AI who once spanned several bodies (including a spaceship), but is now trapped in that of a single human. She's out for answers and revenge, her journey taking her to a faraway planet, where she stumbles across an old acquaintance, Lieutenant Seivarden. The first in a series, Ancillary Justice focuses primarily on the relationship between these two characters as it changes and develops during Breq's pursuit for revenge.
Ancillary Justice has one of the most interesting takes on character perspective I've ever read. Being an AI, Breq used to reside within several human bodies at once, known in this world as ancillaries. Leckie takes this and runs with it to positive effect, giving us the point of view of someone who is in multiple places, seeing multiple things, all at once. It's an almost eerie diversion from most first-person POV books, as we aren't seeing only what one character sees, but instead encompassing the length of an entire city. There is a particularly striking moment early on when Breq mentions that they opened their mouth and sang with three separate bodies at once. This scene really embodies the sense of self Leckie was trying to create for Breq, I think, and dropping these scenes in between the present-day chapters was brilliant. The sense of confinement Breq feels by having those multiple voices ripped away is evident between the two timeframes, a feeling that may not have been quite so strong without these flashbacks.
Alongside the sense of self and perspective, Leckie is having a conversation about personal agency. Even when Breq felt that she was working in her own interests, it's apparent that she wasn't. When she finally feels like her own person, a separate entity from a whole, that illusion is shattered by the reality of what she was and still is. By the end of the novel, I wasn't sure that Breq really had any say in what had happened to her throughout the entire course of her story. It made me a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. Seivarden seems to accept the change of their station with the comfort and ease of someone who was raised to do only that one thing, but Breq's not in the same shoes. When Seivarden talks for her and when she learns from the station's AI how her identity has changed legally but without her consent, she's just along for the ride. She accepts it as something necessary and unavoidable, but she's also not given the space to comment further. She's injured and exhausted and nearly delirious from it, agreeing more to get a chance to rest than anything else.
Ancillary Justice is good sci-fi because of these things, not in spite of them. It's got its fair share of the spaceships, gunfights, and strange environments that come with the more "commercial" idea of sci-fi and frames it with a significant conversation about sense of self, identity, and personal agency. Leckie plays with language and grammatical variances between cultures in interesting ways as well, primarily regarding how each language uses pronouns. Reading some other reviews, I anticipated this take on gender identity to be the strongest message of Leckie's novel, but I found it was only a minor part. Interesting, yes, and unique, but not anything out of the ordinary. I suppose I can see how a cis/straight person could read this and think it was so crazy that a culture would use only feminine pronouns, but it was really a minor theme, I think. It's... not that crazy to me. English defaults to masculine pronouns in a million ways - mailmen, policeman, etc. - so this is just a reverse of that.
I think there's probably a larger discussion hiding in that, about the otherness of using feminine pronouns vs. the "default" masculine, but it's a more in-depth conversation than suits this review. So instead, I want to conclude by saying this novel was very good. Well written, strong sci-fi, and deep themes make it worthy of the accolades it received upon its release, and I would absolutely recommend it.
Ancillary Justice has one of the most interesting takes on character perspective I've ever read. Being an AI, Breq used to reside within several human bodies at once, known in this world as ancillaries. Leckie takes this and runs with it to positive effect, giving us the point of view of someone who is in multiple places, seeing multiple things, all at once. It's an almost eerie diversion from most first-person POV books, as we aren't seeing only what one character sees, but instead encompassing the length of an entire city. There is a particularly striking moment early on when Breq mentions that they opened their mouth and sang with three separate bodies at once. This scene really embodies the sense of self Leckie was trying to create for Breq, I think, and dropping these scenes in between the present-day chapters was brilliant. The sense of confinement Breq feels by having those multiple voices ripped away is evident between the two timeframes, a feeling that may not have been quite so strong without these flashbacks.
Alongside the sense of self and perspective, Leckie is having a conversation about personal agency. Even when Breq felt that she was working in her own interests, it's apparent that she wasn't. When she finally feels like her own person, a separate entity from a whole, that illusion is shattered by the reality of what she was and still is. By the end of the novel, I wasn't sure that Breq really had any say in what had happened to her throughout the entire course of her story. It made me a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. Seivarden seems to accept the change of their station with the comfort and ease of someone who was raised to do only that one thing, but Breq's not in the same shoes. When Seivarden talks for her and when she learns from the station's AI how her identity has changed legally but without her consent, she's just along for the ride. She accepts it as something necessary and unavoidable, but she's also not given the space to comment further. She's injured and exhausted and nearly delirious from it, agreeing more to get a chance to rest than anything else.
Ancillary Justice is good sci-fi because of these things, not in spite of them. It's got its fair share of the spaceships, gunfights, and strange environments that come with the more "commercial" idea of sci-fi and frames it with a significant conversation about sense of self, identity, and personal agency. Leckie plays with language and grammatical variances between cultures in interesting ways as well, primarily regarding how each language uses pronouns. Reading some other reviews, I anticipated this take on gender identity to be the strongest message of Leckie's novel, but I found it was only a minor part. Interesting, yes, and unique, but not anything out of the ordinary. I suppose I can see how a cis/straight person could read this and think it was so crazy that a culture would use only feminine pronouns, but it was really a minor theme, I think. It's... not that crazy to me. English defaults to masculine pronouns in a million ways - mailmen, policeman, etc. - so this is just a reverse of that.
I think there's probably a larger discussion hiding in that, about the otherness of using feminine pronouns vs. the "default" masculine, but it's a more in-depth conversation than suits this review. So instead, I want to conclude by saying this novel was very good. Well written, strong sci-fi, and deep themes make it worthy of the accolades it received upon its release, and I would absolutely recommend it.
cottonmanifesto's review against another edition
5.0
This book is just incredible. A re-read but I love it just as much or more every time I read it.
stegreene's review against another edition
4.0
It starts off very slowly. I spent a long time trying to figure out the relationships between the characters. Once I'd managed this, the story really got going.
I'll be sure to read the second in the series.
I'll be sure to read the second in the series.
stephengreene's review against another edition
4.0
It starts off very slowly. I spent a long time trying to figure out the relationships between the characters. Once I'd managed this, the story really got going.
I'll be sure to read the second in the series.
I'll be sure to read the second in the series.
juushika's review against another edition
4.0
Reread, 2022: I spent a lot of this reread thinking about rereading Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire. The series came out around the same time and both are about imperialism and its discontents; and they're opposites on the spectrums of "rereading a dense, confusing speculative work." In Machineries of Empire, a lot of that confusion is in the calendrical system, a combination of science fiction, magic, and social metaphor with vast worldbuilding implications and dizzying, intentionally unparsable explanations. But in Imperial Radch, particularly here in Ancillary Justice, the multi-instanced/interlinked consciousness and the foil of a two-part narrative is ... super comprehensible, actually; intentionally overwhelming at first blush, but almost more of a narrative trick than authentically dense. This isn't a criticism! It's a satisfying structure, and I love Breq's PoV--in both timelines; in the contrast between them.
Original review, 2016: Once an AI with numerous subsets and physical bodies, Breq is now left with one physical body and desperate, unformed plan. Ancillary Justice has an almost unforgivably slow start, due to an epic space opera scale, an intentionally oblique narrative, and some confusing names. But after the initial adjustment period, the book excels. It's satisfying to watch the wide-ranging plots coalesce, and Leckie's philosophical battles have subtle human faces. The central concept of multi-facet and -body intelligence is phenomenal, not just creative but well-realized; exploring Breq's pluralized point of view is broadening, and has effective reverberations throughout the plot. The non-gendered society I find less successful*, but it remains a welcome addition. I find it easy to overlook Ancillary Justice's flaws, not because I don't see them but because the book is so captivating that I just don't care. I look forward to reading the sequels.
* I am of many minds regarding the treatment of gender. The non-gendered "she" is an innate misnomer and erases non-gendered identities--which are not a speculative thought-experiment: non-gendered people exist, and so do non-gendered pronouns. That said, "she" as universal default is intentionally confrontational, demanding that the reader never develop assumptions about either gender or culture. I enjoy also the reversal of being confused by and dismissing gendered societies--but to remove all concepts of gender is also limiting. There are moment I love, Breq's view of concourse chief among them:
On an individual level, in Breq's grammatical troubles and the intentional crossover into the reader's experience, the execution is often successful. At a worldbuilding/conceptual level, the issue of gender can be clumsy. But what a joy to be given the opportunity to debate this issue at all.
Original review, 2016: Once an AI with numerous subsets and physical bodies, Breq is now left with one physical body and desperate, unformed plan. Ancillary Justice has an almost unforgivably slow start, due to an epic space opera scale, an intentionally oblique narrative, and some confusing names. But after the initial adjustment period, the book excels. It's satisfying to watch the wide-ranging plots coalesce, and Leckie's philosophical battles have subtle human faces. The central concept of multi-facet and -body intelligence is phenomenal, not just creative but well-realized; exploring Breq's pluralized point of view is broadening, and has effective reverberations throughout the plot. The non-gendered society I find less successful*, but it remains a welcome addition. I find it easy to overlook Ancillary Justice's flaws, not because I don't see them but because the book is so captivating that I just don't care. I look forward to reading the sequels.
* I am of many minds regarding the treatment of gender. The non-gendered "she" is an innate misnomer and erases non-gendered identities--which are not a speculative thought-experiment: non-gendered people exist, and so do non-gendered pronouns. That said, "she" as universal default is intentionally confrontational, demanding that the reader never develop assumptions about either gender or culture. I enjoy also the reversal of being confused by and dismissing gendered societies--but to remove all concepts of gender is also limiting. There are moment I love, Breq's view of concourse chief among them:
I saw them all, suddenly, for just a moment, through non-Radchaai eyes, an eddying crowd of unnervingly ambiguously gendered people. I saw all the features that would mark gender for non-Radchaii--never, to my annoyance and inconvenience, the same way in each place. Short hair or long, worn unbound (trailing down a back, or in a thick, curled nimbus) or bound (braided, pinned, tied). Thick-bodied or thin-, faces delicate-featured or coarse-, with cosmetics or none. A profusion of colors that would have been gender-marked in other places. All of this matched randomly with bodies curving at breast and hip or not, bodies that one moment moved in ways various non-Radchaai would call feminine, the next moment masculine. Twenty years of habit overtook me, and for an instant I despaired of choosing the right pronouns, the right terms of address. But I didn't need to do that here. I could drop that worry, a small but annoying weight I had carried all this time. I was home.
On an individual level, in Breq's grammatical troubles and the intentional crossover into the reader's experience, the execution is often successful. At a worldbuilding/conceptual level, the issue of gender can be clumsy. But what a joy to be given the opportunity to debate this issue at all.