First an apology – it’s been awhile since I’ve put up a post. I’ve wanted to write but it’s just been one of those weeks – some travel but mainly just busy days – getting home a bit later and a bit more tired than usual. Those times when I’ve tried to to read – I found myself waking up with a book lying on my chest or on my face – not having made much progress. It’s taken me the better part of a week to finish this book. The good news – WOW – what a book. This one worked for me on every level and in every way – as good as anything I’ve recently read.
One more quick apology – this is probably going to be a long post and many of you who start reading won’t make it to the end. But….if the post convinces even one more person to read this book who hasn’t already – I’m mindful of the fact that it’s been out for over 2 years and the author has already released Volumes 2 & 3 of the Trilogy (“Ancillary Sword” and “Ancillary Mercy”) – I’ll be happy. I loved it and can’t help but want others to have the chance to enjoy it as well.
One final introductory comment – it’s probably obvious to anyone who’s read my posts that I’m not a professional writer, reviewer or critic. I don’t have a technical or academic understanding of what makes a book “noteworthy” or “well-crafted” or “praise-worthy”. Anyone who does will find much of what I write to be flawed but I don’t really care. In his attempt to establish a legal threshold for obscenity, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart – in Jacobellis v. Ohio – wrote:
“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description (“hard-core pornography”), and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
I may not be able to define worthy writing in a knowledgeable or technical way but I’ve read enough to know a good book or story when I see one – and this is one.
As I’m reading a new book, I pay attention to four things: 1) the way in which an author’s use of words and the English language resonates with me – quality of the writing, 2) the characters and the degree to which I relate to them – either positively or negatively – do they fascinate me, do I like them, do I hate them, 3) the world the author creates – is it comprehensible, is it complete, does it have depth, a history, a sense of past that flows into the present and forward into an understandable future, and finally – 4) the plot – does it all hang together. I can enjoy any one of these in isolation and come away enjoying a book. With “Ancillary Justice”, I really enjoyed all four.
First, the quality of the writing – Ann Leckie’s writing is sharp and sophisticated – I enjoyed the complexity of it – but also poetic and emotional. It has a very rich feel without being pretentious or overburdened or verbose. You really glide through the narrative and the words never get in the way. It’s a Goldilocks read – neither too cold nor too hot – it’s just right.
I can be a judgmental reader – I spend a lot of time as I read thinking about how the author might have improved on what he or she had written – I pick out places where I think he or she made mistakes either in her grammar, word choice, sentence structure or the way in which he or she elicited an emotion. I can’t remember a single time while reading this book where I had to pause and think about a different way to do what Ann had done – I really did think it was just right.
Secondly, the characters – it’s rare that I get through a book without finding at least one character – major or minor – that I consider to be poorly built. I’ll use “The Collapsing Empire” as an example – subject of a prior post. It was one that I enjoyed largely due to one character – Kiva Lagos. The writing, the world and the plot were all fine but Kiva is the one element of the book that stands out and will bring me back to the series. At the same time, I found several other characters in the book to be either one dimensional and boring – Cardenia and Marce Claremont – or overstated and caricatured – the Nohamapetans, particularly Ghreni. Those characters weren’t enough to kill the book for me – I still enjoyed it – but it was one of the things that kept the book as a whole, at least for me, from being a compelling read.
I couldn’t find a character in this book that wasn’t compelling. The Justice Of Toren AI, the primary character – a Justice Of Toren ancillary designated One Esk Nineteen but later redefining itself as an individual named Breq, Lieutenant Awn, the creator of and imperial authority within the Radch Empire Anaander Mianaai, Seivarden and everyone else in this book – I enjoyed and appreciated them all. I found none to be overdone or cliche or caricatured – they all fit naturally within the world in which they lived and were well-rooted in the society and the religion the author created. Breq, Seivarden and Anaander Miannai – both of her aspects – carry the story and I enjoyed all three (four if you count both fragments of Anaander Mianaai). None of them are either too good or too bad – they’re believable products of the time in which they live, the history and stresses of the universe they inhabit and their genesis as beings – another Goldilocks outcome. I found the way in which Ann Leckie incorporates a love of music as a defining characteristic into the personality of Justice Of Toren / One Esk Nineteen / Breq – not completely sure how to make the distinction – and uses it to move the plot – to be particularly intriguing.
Finally, I really enjoy the AI characters – Justice Of Toren, the AI controlling the Station hosting Omaugh Palace and Mercy of Kalr – in the same way that I enjoy the AI characters in Neil Asher’s Polity novels. In some weird way, both authors have managed to make their AIs far more interesting and admirable than the humans they support and protect. As you’d expect, they’re rational, dutiful and dependable. When held up against their human foils, however, they also come off as more likable. They engage you both intellectually and emotionally and they stand out as an attractive aspect within a society where too many things leave you with a bit of a queasy feeling.
The World and the Radch are complex and fascinating and built so as to leave you always wondering about the worthiness of the society. At a macro-level, it feels regimented, rigid, authoritarian and a bit bland. All is as Anaander Mainaai built it to be. As you begin to see the world through the eyes and actions of the individuals, however – Breq and Seivarden, Awn, Skaaiat, Vel and even the other ship AI in the story – Mercy of Kalr – you see subtleties and ambiguities and stresses that disabuse you of the notion. The omnipresent nature of the AIs and the directive and rigidly defned society established by the original Anaander Mainaai are balanced by the room for debate and disagreement and conflicting worldviews that the war between the two halves of the recently fractured Anaander allow. As you read through the book, you see this as a society that has both utopian and dystopian elements. In the end, Leckie’s world has both a richness and an ambiguity that I really enjoyed.
One element of her universe that really appealed to me is the way Ann Leckie incorporated aspects of the history and culture of Ancient Rome into the Radch. Anyone who’s read past posts knows I have a real interest in classical history – my first read there was Gibbon’s “The History Of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. As I worked through the book, I couldn’t help finding little similarities – the way in which Radch grew through annexation, an economy and society built on geographic expansion, the state religion flexible enough to incorporate elements of the religions of annexed worlds – it all felt a little familiar. When I read the interview with Ann Leckie at the end of the book, she specifically commented on this – acknowledging those elements – one small, additional source of gratification.
NOTE: One aspect of the Radch that resonated with me – something that I didn’t become conscious of until I’d put up this post, made it to the gym and was halfway through my workout – were certain similarities to Japan. I lived in Japan for 7 years and came away with a deep appreciation for many aspects of that culture – one of those being the importance of tradition and ritual in daily life. So much of what the Japanese do every day with respect to personal interactions is ritualized – universally understood and accepted – not negotiable. That ritualized component of personal interaction helps to ensure consistency, harmony and predictability. As I was thinking about the book on the treadmill – I realized that the Radch had similarly ritualized components built into their society. I have no idea whether Ann Leckie purposely wrote this into the book with Japan in mind or whether it’s an insight unique to me – due to my time in the country – but I think it’s one more small thing that made the book so fascinating for me.
Finally, the plot – and I’ll start by saying it’s complex. For the first half of the book, it jumps back and forth between two stories separated in time by about 20 years. The author also relates a couple of initially understated but ultimately critical historical episodes in the first half. As all of this is happening, she really doesn’t make it easy for you – you have to have a little faith and stay with her. It’s easy to see her writing the first half of the book – grinning all the way – thinking about the fun she’s having at her readers’ expense but also aware of the satisfaction she’ll leave them with by the end. All of this comes together around the middle of the book – at which time the plot just starts to bloom like a rose. She connects everything and moves you very pretty rapidly towards what I found to be an extremely satisfying conclusion. The less objectionable fragment of Anaander prevails without ever proving itself to be particularly sympathetic, Breq survives and is offered an acceptable place within the Radch without having to experience a transformational epiphany that robs him of his uniqueness and Seivarden survives and grows through some of his / her fragility. I just really enjoyed the way she challenged me and forced me to start connecting what were – initially – pretty random dots – then filling in the remaining blanks and bringing it all home.
One final comment – there were fun, little bits throughout the story that could have gotten lost among all the big things – but which turned out to be a source of joy for me. Towards the end of the book – there’s a scene where Breq has commandeered a shuttle from Mercy of Kalr, escaping the Station in an attempt to communicate with the AI controlled warships in the vicinity of the station – when he engages the Mercy of Kalr AI in a conversation and requests her assistance. In the middle of a critical conversation meant to save the Station and millions of lives, Breq takes the time to inform the Mercy of Kalr that the hinges of the shuttle hatch were not properly maintained, making the hatch difficult to open and close and that Mercy of Kalr should probably insist on better performance from it’s human crew. Mercy of Kalr acknowledges its negligence, apologizes for the shortcoming and commits to improved future performance. That fairly routine conversation at the most critical point in the plot just struck me as fun and funny and helped to completely endear the AIs to me. How can you not applaud an author for having that kind of fun with their work.
This one was a win for me and I really hope anyone who hasn’t read it will – soon. It was good enough to totally scramble my plan for the weekend. Now that I’ve gotten this out, I have No choice but to start in on Book Two – “Ancillary Sword”. If I enjoy the second volume as much as I’ve enjoyed the first, I’ll move straight to Book Three – “Ancillary Mercy”. Nothing else is going to get read until I find out what happens to Breq and the Radch.