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 […]
Chose my aim. Take one step and then the next. There had never been anything else.
I will often hear about an award winning science fiction book and think “I should read that, but I won’t because it sounds serious and boring.” That is what I thought when I heard about Ancillary Justice. Yes, I want to slap me too. Two things happened that moved the Imperial Radch series off my “ought to, but won’t” list. One, Leckie loves Murderbot and two, all three audio books were available on Scribd during my free trial period. I was correct that Ancillary Justice does […]
Becoming more human
3.5 stars. I’m still not totally sure what I think about the second book in the Imperial Radch series. I think I’ve been putting off my review for it because I’m uncertain about it. On one hand, it was immensely readable. On the other hand, not much seemed to happen. The first book was pretty plot driven with Breq out for revenge and lots of flashbacks. Ancillary Sword is fully based in the present and takes things slowly. SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t read book […]
Ancillary Thoughts
I love it when you read tons of awesome books on your vacation. The Imperial Radch books, which I read back-to-back, were a great vacation read. They’re thought provoking science fiction wrapped up in good fun space opera, and really that’s all I wanted. I’m going to do one big review for all three books because the things I want to say about the books are true for all three novels, and to be honest I’m not sure that I could really untangle the last two […]