Assyria soon discovered a painful truth: empires are like Ponzi schemes: financial frauds in which previous investors are paid returns out of new investors’ deposits. The costs of holding imperial territory can only be underwritten by loot and tribute extracted by constant new conquests; empires must continue to expand if they are not to collapse.” – Paul Kriwaczek, Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth Of Civilization At the end of Ancillary Justice, Anaander Mianaai was openly at war with herself. One faction of the Lord of […]
A space opera that’s more concerned with the little people than the space or the opera.
Oh, man. This series. This book!!!! WHAT. Ancillary Mercy is probably my favorite of the series so far. The first book might overtake it on re-read, just because I’m a sucker for finely structured stories, and Breq’s revenge journey cum search for identity alternated with flashbacks to her time as Justice of Toren was very, very satisfying (you know, once you figured out what the hell was going on). The second book was Breq beginning to come into her own, win people over to her […]
On “Significance,” Asimov’s Zeroth Law, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Book 3 of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series, featuring corpse soldier (ancillary) Breq, sort-of/kind-of/not completely concludes the tale of Breq’s quest for justice. In Book 1, Leckie sets up her Radch Empire and Breq’s background — how she went from being the artificial intelligence of an imperial ship, serving her captain and able to see and know all through her ancillaries, to being an isolated and separate individual with the formidable strength of an ancillary and a powerful desire for revenge. In Book 2, the […]