Skip to main content

Book Review: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

35. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie



Have you ever heard the joke that one person is a world? In Ancillary Justice, one person is a ship. It's an idea that we can all relate to, stunningly realized by Ann Leckie in crisp, simplistic diction.

This idea, of a ship that is a person, is what makes this story sing (literally). Ancillary Justice is a compelling example that great science fiction is essentially the literalization of metaphors (according to Seo-Young Chu in Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep?), or a cognitive estrangement from the mimesis of reality (a wordier but not more complicated idea from Darko Suvin's criticism).

Breq, the narrator, is the last remaining "piece," if you will, of a vast artificial intelligence network that controlled an enormous troop carrying star ship, which led ominous "annexations" for thousands of years. To complicate matters more, Breq is actually a human body, that hundreds or thousands of years ago was wiped of its memories to become an "ancillary" of the ship, one of many ancillaries imbued with the same artificial intelligence. In a sense, Breq was (is) the ship.

Talk about an identity crisis.

It's this concept that captivated me most about Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, but it was not the concept that was the reason I read it in the first place.

All the characters in Ancillary Justice are referred to as "she." The language of Breq's empire, the Radch, does not distinguish between genders. Biological sex exists, it simply is not reflected in the language. When I read reviews that mentioned this phenomenon in the up-and-coming novel that was nominated for, and went on to win, the Nebula Award and also the Arthur C. Clarke Award, I thought, that is a book I should read.

But like another reviewer (can't remember who, sorry) said, referring to all characters as "she" makes very little difference to the novel. It's distracting, at first, when one realizes that a character described as "an old person with gray hair and a close-cut gray beard" is probably not female, but it's ultimately irrelevant. As it should be. That's the point. Just as Kathryn Janeway's captaincy of a star ship is a non-issue, so is the use of feminine pronouns for all characters in Ancillary Justice. And so, it's not the Janewayean language that makes this story tick.

After you've gotten used to the pronouns, it's this line that really throw you:

"Nineteen years, three months, and one week before I found Seivarden in the snow, I was a troop carrier orbiting the planet Shis'urna."

I had to read that line several times. And refer back to it later on.

Ancillary Justice is meticulously crafted, with a hard kernel of non-fantastic truth. Identity is a phenomenon that, despite the eons we've spent struggling with it, we still don't understand, but that the nature thereof, both individual and collective, can tear us apart. And in Leckie's universe, we won't be able to take our eyes off the unraveling. I've already bought the sequel, Ancillary Sword, and I can't wait for what comes next.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Books with Single-Word Titles

Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl! Books with Single-Word Titles These are all my favorite books that I could think of with one-word titles. A lot of fantasy, a few nonfiction (minus subtitles) and Kindred , whether you consider it scifi or historical fiction. Also two portmanteaus using the word "bitter." I suppose it's a word that lends itself to amelioration. 1. Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler 2. Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore 3. Fire by Kristin Cashore 4. Heartless by Marissa Meyer 5. Inheritance by Christopher Paolini 6. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 7. Stoned by Aja Raden (has a subtitle) 8. Educated by Tara Westover 9. Fledgling by Octavia Butler 10. Kindred by Octavia Butler

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

Speaking of cultures and society, I leave for Spain on January 9. Instead of continuing as a book blog with a specific goal for number of books to read in a year, Space Station Mir will become a chronicle for my adventures in Spain. Expect a post for each new place that I visit, with pictures! I also plan to continue reviewing books, however I will not make a set goal for number of books to read this year. I do pledge myself to read at least one book in Spanish that was not assigned for a class. In terms of my goals for 2009, I was not diligent enough in keeping track of them. Looking back, I've fulfilled some of them and not others. The greatest trend in my reading this year, which marks a huge deviation for me, is that I've read more non-fiction than I think I've read any other year in my life. I've finally developed the ability to sustain interest in non-fiction other than biographies. For a while, biographies were the only non-fiction I ever read, with the exception

Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish

 I feel like I've been DNFing a fair amount lately, mostly with review books. I feel obligated to read review books longer than I would if they were books I just picked up on my own. That said, I have a caveat in my Book Review Policy  that if I feel I am not the right audience for the book, I won't post a review. I try to avoid that by only picking books I genuinely think I will enjoy, but of course I can't always predict that before I read. Also, while book clubs have been a great way to get exposed to books I wouldn't normally read, tastes will differ and every once in a while, I find a book I'm just not willing to finish. I also want to say no shade to the authors or anyone who enjoyed these books--they just weren't for me. Happy Top Ten Tuesday! Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish 1. Caribbean Competitors by Poppy Minnix--LibraryThing review--This one sounded great and has a beautiful cover, but while the island setting was compelling, I just couldn't ge