Book Review: Ancillary Justice
The first novel in Ann Leckie’s multi-award-winning Imperial Radch space opera trilogy.
This book had been sitting on my shelf for well over a year by the time I picked it up to actually read. Such is the way of the eternal TBR. I’m glad I finally did, though. I really love the cover art for this book, and those of its sequels Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, each one taken from a single painting by John Harris, split into triptych. And I have to admit, the cover is really what drew me to Ancillary Justice initially. Well, that, and an intense curiosity about such a highly-regarded space opera. So, let’s get into it.
Blurb
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Breq is both more than she seems and less than she was. Years ago, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship and an artificial intelligence controlling thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. An act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with only one fragile human body. But that might just be enough to take revenge against those who destroyed her.
Review
There’s a lot to like about Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. In the beginning it reminded me very strongly of The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossessed, and it had the groundedness that I adore in Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing. Up to a point, like The Dispossessed, each chapter alternates between past and present, telling the story of how Justice of Toren became Breq, while simultaneously driving us forward in Breq’s current quest. Also, in the same vein as Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War trilogy, we are dealing with a sentient warship as a main character, and that’s always great fun. What makes this really stand out, however, is the really weird point of view. It takes a lot of getting used to, since in the chapters set in the past, we’re seeing through the multitudinal eyes of Justice of Toren’s ancillary segments, essentially making the ship a near-omniscient narrator. At the same time, there’s a great deal of discussion about the individuality of these segments when compared to the whole. They are treated as both distinct from and yet the same as Justice of Toren, the warship. They don’t have their own distinct personalities per se, but there is a lot of times where clarification is made as to which “I” our narrator is referring to. This pluralistic individuality only gets weirder and more confusing as the story goes on.
Also odd is the treatment of gender - Breq/Justice of Toren refers to everyone with feminine pronouns, which if I understood this correctly, is due to Rachaai language being entirely gender-neutral (everyone is called “citizen”, for instance). Though I don’t quite understand why it defaulted to the feminine when the singular “they” exists - perhaps that would’ve become too easily confused with the plural. At one point I did think to myself that Breq was purposefully misgendering everyone. I also thought that we would get a better look at the gender aspect of the differing languages. We’re told numerous times when Breq or other characters swap into a different language or dialect, and those other - human - characters (sometimes) used the correct pronouns for each other in those languages (even correcting Breq at times - and this is why I felt like Breq was purposefully misgendering, because she kept using the feminine pronouns even after being told the correct ones). However, I think the author forgot about that by the end, because after a certain point, that interesting pronoun differentiation almost entirely vanishes. I see what the author was trying to do, and I appreciate it, but it didn’t land for me.
Plot-wise, it’s a clever book, or at least, it’s trying to be so. We have a visceral and thoroughly fascinating look at what a Rachaai annexation and occupation looks like, and the revenge story is not in any way straightforward. The twists and turns towards the latter half of the book are, as I said, very “clever”. Unfortunately, just like with Neuromancer, when the book got extremely weird at the tail end, I began to struggle with following what was happening. It’s a good thing that this is offset by the book being a smooth read. It all went down easily, and I found myself really blasting through it without realising how much I’d read. But when I did put it down, I found myself hesitant to pick it back up again because of the weirdness. An odd combination, for sure, but it meant it’s taken me longer to read than I had intended.
The characters are okay. Breq/Justice of Toren is compelling, but I had a hard time believing or understanding the motivation for her quest - mainly because of all the weirdness to do with the Lord of the Radch. I did enjoy the character arc for Seivarden, who goes from a complete self-indulged mess to ride-or-die. My favourite character, though, was Lieutenant Awn, and I found her the most relatable. She was the definite underdog in the plot, and her struggles to keep the peace between the different factions of Ors was interesting.
A lot of attention is paid to the role of religion and superstition within the Radch and how the spiritual practices of annexed worlds are absorbed into the flexible official religion of the empire. Aliens are also mentioned in the book, but never seen, which is a little disappointing. It does give it an air of mystery, though. In their alienness, they’re about level with the other races of Gareth L. Powell’s Multiplicity in Embers of War - perhaps moreso. Unknowable, implacable, somewhat disinterested in human affairs. I assume that we’ll probably see those turn up in-person in the later books. The Radch has a very well developed culture, seen through their complex caste system, disgust for bare hands, and other small details, and we get glimpses of the various wildly different non-Radch cultures too.
On the point about detail… I don’t quite understand this tendency to over-analyse character micro-expressions in SF. Like the sudden twitch of a finger, the barest hint of a smirk, or a nanosecond delay in expressing surprise, being telltale signs of deceit and duplicity. I understood it in Dune, because of the Bene Gesserit training, but here in Ancillary Justice, it’s a little weird. I guess you could explain it by the fact that Breq is an AI who is used to noticing subtle changes in her crew that reveal their true feelings, but the fact that other human characters exhibit this ability as well is… odd.
Overall, Ancillary Justice comes out a little on the dull side, and quite confusing, but with some excellent aspects that held it together for me and balanced it out. It was good, but I wouldn’t count it as one of the best I’ve read. I’m not sure if I’ll be continuing the series - I don’t think I could handle how mind-bending it became at the end again.
