Ancillary Justice

, #1

Google Play eBook, 327 pages

English language

Published Feb. 22, 2013 by Hachette UK, Google Ireland Ltd.

ISBN:
978-1-4055-2584-8
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4 stars (9 reviews)

On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Once, she was the Justice of Toren--a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.

14 editions

reviewed Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, #1)

Two sides of a crisis

5 stars

There's so many good bits and little shiny details in this epic redemption journey. In the past, a simple occupation mission by an atrocious all-conquering invasion force goes awry with a mysterious conspiracy coming to a head. The protagonist is an AI ship consciousness multiply embodied in enslaved human soldiers. A crisis builds under the watchful eye of an empress that rules from within thousands of bodies.

In the present, the aftermath of the crisis is our protagonist singly embodied, troubled by the atrocities it committed and dedicated to a hopeless mission of vengeance.

There is a lot of dealing with a... not an untrustworthy narrator but an extremely neurodivergent naive narrator. Lots of fun gender issues and language issues that present as interesting puzzles for the reader.

Cool space opera

4 stars

This is a fun space opera that has all the fun space opera things: giant interstellar empires; worldbuilding on various interstellar cultures, and how they interact with each other, and how they do gender; exploration of how cognition and identity works in entities that are not (or not entirely) human; grand plots and conspiracies.

The overall plot is perhaps a bit simple, and some of the characters lean perhaps too much into one-dimensional archetypes, but it does not matter that much against the lively worldbuilding, and how it ties into the whole story.

reviewed Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, #1)

Review of 'Ancillary Justice' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Solid space opera, excellent characters. It took a while to get rolling but it was worth it for once it did. It was really different from what you normally get in your space opera, leaving out many of the genre's annoying features.It's not a book I'd recommend to everyone because of the pacing. However, it's the writer's first novel so I hope she gets stronger at keeping the tension a bit tighter in her next books. And there better be next books!

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5 stars
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Subjects

  • Fiction
  • Science Fiction
  • Space Opera
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Hard Science Fiction
  • Military Fiction

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