B Ö A B reviewed Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, #1)
Amazing
5 stars
Amazing, with a capital A. It's been a while since a book grabbed me this quickly and this hard.
English language
Published May 8, 2023 by Orbit.
Amazing, with a capital A. It's been a while since a book grabbed me this quickly and this hard.
This one took a bit of warming up to, the perspective of the main character/narrator was a bit hard to follow at first, but once I saw what was going on it became easier. Definitely a page turner. I enjoyed the novel perspective, and found myself quite attached to the characters by the end. A friend lent my all 3 of the books in the series, and I can't wait to dig into the next one.
Really enjoyed this book. In some ways it's a classic space opera but there's enough twists on the formula that it feels super fresh. Fascinating explorations of identity, language, and class. The writing was fun and engaging, I ate this book up.
Space Opera in 3 parts — long, grand, sci-fi, easy & fun to read. Incidentally the main civilisation of the book does not distinguish gender, which is represented in the book by giving everybody female pronouns, which is kind of a cool reading experience. I like the depiction of fragile consciousness of the protagonist.
I'd give the last half 4 stars, but I might have given up on this book before the halfway point if people I know hadn't rated it so high.
This is a fantastic, page-turner of a book. The world building is superb and the characters are rich and believable.
But like all great science fiction there is much more to Ancillary Justice than just plot, world and character. Leckie tackles uses the book to ask some genuinely interesting questions about society, language, religion and gender. And beneath all of this is that fundamental question of all science fiction (or at least the sci-fi that I love): what does it mean to be human?
Ancillary Justice tells the story of a large ship Justice of Toren) or rather the ship’s AI. But this is not AI as we currently know it. Much of the book concerns itself with the relationship between reason and emotion. In order to be able to make decisions without looping through millions of possibilities ships have feelings. Importantly ships get attached to certain people just as …
This is a fantastic, page-turner of a book. The world building is superb and the characters are rich and believable.
But like all great science fiction there is much more to Ancillary Justice than just plot, world and character. Leckie tackles uses the book to ask some genuinely interesting questions about society, language, religion and gender. And beneath all of this is that fundamental question of all science fiction (or at least the sci-fi that I love): what does it mean to be human?
Ancillary Justice tells the story of a large ship Justice of Toren) or rather the ship’s AI. But this is not AI as we currently know it. Much of the book concerns itself with the relationship between reason and emotion. In order to be able to make decisions without looping through millions of possibilities ships have feelings. Importantly ships get attached to certain people just as humans do. Justice of Toren has control of a number of human bodies. She is eventually destroyed and only one body survives. The rest of the story is her quest for revenge.
Interestingly, the Radch (the society which made Justice of Toren) does not recognize gender markers. Throughout the book (narrated by Justice of Toren) almost everyone is referred to with feminine nouns, unless gender needs to be acknowledged in the language being spoken. While this would seem to be progressive, the Radch is a surveillance-based empire that fuels it expansion with a truly disturbing type of slavery.
This is typical of the book. Leckie is asking difficult questions and does not offer any easy answers. Rich though her characters are, their motivations are often obscure. While I initially saw this as a flaw, I now see that this as a key feature of Leckie’s art. While she does use the daily typical “what happens next” hooks to keep the reader engaged, far more compelling is “why did she do that?”
At the end of the book, there is still much that is unclear. Many of the characters are still a mystery, as is the fate of Radch society as a whole. I’m very much looking forward to reading the next book in this series.
3.5. Con la relectura me ha dado la impresión de que la autora se podría haber arriesgado un poco más en esta primera parte. Pero la idea es muy buena. He hablado más de este libro en esta entrada.
The book is an interesting piece of sci-fi. It's nighter the best nor the worst. It explores interesting concepts like multiple bodies, a society without gender, AI and galactic imperialism. All are explored in an intriguing way, that makes my thoughts explore the concepts deeper.
As for criticism, the book is quite a though read, it jumps in time quite a lot and the main character has multiple bodies that are quite hard to keep track of. This also makes the narrative quite hard to follow as I wasn't always knowing where and when the scene was taking place. Some form of indication maybe a location and time signifier in the beginning of the chapter would be nice. And even so the story is sadly not the best, it seems to me and I might have misunderstood to be a quite generic revenge story.
To summarise, this book explores multiple …
The book is an interesting piece of sci-fi. It's nighter the best nor the worst. It explores interesting concepts like multiple bodies, a society without gender, AI and galactic imperialism. All are explored in an intriguing way, that makes my thoughts explore the concepts deeper.
As for criticism, the book is quite a though read, it jumps in time quite a lot and the main character has multiple bodies that are quite hard to keep track of. This also makes the narrative quite hard to follow as I wasn't always knowing where and when the scene was taking place. Some form of indication maybe a location and time signifier in the beginning of the chapter would be nice. And even so the story is sadly not the best, it seems to me and I might have misunderstood to be a quite generic revenge story.
To summarise, this book explores multiple very interesting concepts that makes the book worth the read, even if it's quite a sprawling and not very interesting narrative. I would recommend people interested reading Ursula Le Guins: Left Hand of Darkness first but still I'm not glad I read Ancillary Justice and despite it's flaws look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.
La descripción de la IA protagonista con múltiples puntos de vista parecía interesante, pero la historia es poco interesante (puede que por estar poco desarrollada)
This is the most enjoyable, engrossing novel—SF or otherwise— that I've read in a while. The cynic in me says that's because I don't read enough fiction; the optimist in me tells the cynic to shut up and just enjoy the moment.
There are a number of interesting ideas here: AI with feelings and emotions; people with hundreds or thousands of bodies (like the puppies from [b:A Fire Upon the Deep|77711|A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought, #1)|Vernor Vinge|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333915005s/77711.jpg|1253374] writ large; very large). And what happens when the head of the government is pretty much the entire government? And also effectively immortal?
Granted, these same ideas mean that this isn't entry-level SF. But if you're someone who reads the slates of Hugo and Nebula nominees, you'll likely get a kick out of this.