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Title: Ancillary Justice
Author: Ann Leckie
Genre: Hard SF
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: Once a ship with a thousand ancillary bodies, an AI masquerading as a single human is determined to bring down an empire for revenge.
Thoughts: This book is brilliant on a couple of different fronts. The plot itself is clever, densely woven, and compelling. It takes awhile to understand the details of what's going on, and Leckie's empire is a fascinating and unsettling place.
But part of what's so interesting about this book is the way in which it is written. One Esk, for much of the book, is a single consciousness spread across multiple entities. It makes for a strangely third person narrative by a first person narrator.
Also interesting is the way Leckie treats gender. The native language of the protagonist has no gender pronouns. One Esk has trouble even figuring out what gender people are--to the Radchaai, it's not particularly relevant. Leckie portrays this by using female pronouns for everyone. Even characters who are established to be male get female pronouns--and most characters, we never find out what gender they are. Relationships can be romantically or sexually charged without trying to figure out whether they're same or opposite sex or who is which. Power dynamics have nothing to do with gender. Familial relationships are all sisters or daughters, without any baggage or implications. It's fascinating, and deeply uncomfortable--not in the terms of this story itself, but in the realization it generates of how many assumptions are usually packed into gender. It does not matter whether Lieutenant Awn is male or female, except that we would perceive her differently depending on her gender. Except One Esk wouldn't.
This isn't a political correctness stunt, though. This is a complicated, fascinating meditation on ethics with a hard SF core. There's a reason it took home so many awards this year.
Author: Ann Leckie
Genre: Hard SF
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: Once a ship with a thousand ancillary bodies, an AI masquerading as a single human is determined to bring down an empire for revenge.
Thoughts: This book is brilliant on a couple of different fronts. The plot itself is clever, densely woven, and compelling. It takes awhile to understand the details of what's going on, and Leckie's empire is a fascinating and unsettling place.
But part of what's so interesting about this book is the way in which it is written. One Esk, for much of the book, is a single consciousness spread across multiple entities. It makes for a strangely third person narrative by a first person narrator.
Also interesting is the way Leckie treats gender. The native language of the protagonist has no gender pronouns. One Esk has trouble even figuring out what gender people are--to the Radchaai, it's not particularly relevant. Leckie portrays this by using female pronouns for everyone. Even characters who are established to be male get female pronouns--and most characters, we never find out what gender they are. Relationships can be romantically or sexually charged without trying to figure out whether they're same or opposite sex or who is which. Power dynamics have nothing to do with gender. Familial relationships are all sisters or daughters, without any baggage or implications. It's fascinating, and deeply uncomfortable--not in the terms of this story itself, but in the realization it generates of how many assumptions are usually packed into gender. It does not matter whether Lieutenant Awn is male or female, except that we would perceive her differently depending on her gender. Except One Esk wouldn't.
This isn't a political correctness stunt, though. This is a complicated, fascinating meditation on ethics with a hard SF core. There's a reason it took home so many awards this year.
