Paperback, 409 pages
English language
Published Oct. 1, 2013 by Orbit.
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.
Breq is both more than she seems and less than she was. Years ago, she was Justice of Toren–a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of corpse soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.
An act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with only one fragile human body. And only one purpose–to revenge herself on Anaander Mianaai, many-bodied, near-immortal Lord of the Radch.
This one took a bit of warming up to, the perspective of the main character/narrator was a bit hard to follow at first, but once I saw what was going on it became easier. Definitely a page turner. I enjoyed the novel perspective, and found myself quite attached to the characters by the end. A friend lent my all 3 of the books in the series, and I can't wait to dig into the next one.
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.
Really enjoyed this book. In some ways it's a classic space opera but there's enough twists on the formula that it feels super fresh. Fascinating explorations of identity, language, and class. The writing was fun and engaging, I ate this book up.
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.
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!
