Target: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) and Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch #2) Profile: Science Fiction, Space Opera The Imperial Radch series is a relatively simple little space opera, in the classic sense of the term. Spanning hundreds, if not thousands of years, multiple star systems and a variety of cultural influences, it’s a series firmly rooted in the tropes of its genre. While Ancillary Justice does wonderful things with those ideas and concepts, building a surprisingly compelling setting and cast, the series as […]
Must-Read Sci-Fi
One of my favorite books of 2014 was Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. It’s a sci-fi novel that won pretty much every prize awarded for that genre and features one of the coolest protagonists I’ve ever encountered in literature: Breq, an “ancillary” or corpse soldier who has been untethered from the collective consciousness of her ship but retains amazing physical and cognitive powers. As one character states in book 2, “[Breq] is pretty fucking badass.” In book 1, Breq was on a mission to reach the […]
My only foray into science-fiction this year
Please find my last review of the year here.
Come for the spaceship protagonist, stay for the emooootions.
Breq is smart. Breq is capable and knowledgable. Breq is thoughtful, empathetic. Breq yearns for social justice. Breq mourns for lost love. Breq loves to sing, but has a bit of a temper. Breq used to be a spaceship. Well, if we’re going to get technical, Breq was the artificial intelligence who inhabited the spaceship Justice of Toren, and also thousands of ancillary human bodies (whose previous inhabitants had, um, vacated the premises). Now she only inhabits one, and almost everyone she has ever known […]