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.
J’ai eu du mal à me mettre dedans, les règles grammaticales sur le genre étant non seulement confusante mais désagréable (j’ai eu l’occasion de lire un livre où tout était genré au féminin « elle pleut », « la bébé », mais ce n’est pas pareil). Après quelques chapitres (et ayant appris que la version originale était aussi « perturbante » et que ce n’était pas une aberration de traduction), j’ai enfin profité du livre. Une histoire complexe et très bien ficelée, originale, que j’ai trouvé très rafraîchissante.
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.
2021-07-05: 2nd reading: absolutely loved this book. Maybe because I've already read the series and that made it far less confusing this time, or I was just in the right mood this time. For whatever reason, really enjoyed this book.
What a slow burner this book is. By the time you realize how really really good it is, you're more than halfway done, so it definitely requires patience.
The first-person narrator is Breq, who felt a bit like a prototype for our beloved Murderbot from the Martha Wells series. Breq is an ancillary, a human body controlled by the AI of a ship, in this case the Justice of Toren. Only Breq's ship no longer exists, so instead of having hundreds of bodies and eyes and all that comes with being the body of a ship, there's just her, on her mission to kill the Lord of the Radch, the leader of the Empire of Radch.
Along the way she gets stuck with Seivarden, one of her former officers who's struggling with substance abuse after waking up a 1000 years after her ship was destroyed.
In order to understand this …
What a slow burner this book is. By the time you realize how really really good it is, you're more than halfway done, so it definitely requires patience.
The first-person narrator is Breq, who felt a bit like a prototype for our beloved Murderbot from the Martha Wells series. Breq is an ancillary, a human body controlled by the AI of a ship, in this case the Justice of Toren. Only Breq's ship no longer exists, so instead of having hundreds of bodies and eyes and all that comes with being the body of a ship, there's just her, on her mission to kill the Lord of the Radch, the leader of the Empire of Radch.
Along the way she gets stuck with Seivarden, one of her former officers who's struggling with substance abuse after waking up a 1000 years after her ship was destroyed.
In order to understand this much of the plot, you have to be like 40% into this book because you get tossed right in, with lots of flashbacks to Breq's previous life. Nothing makes sense! And what's with the gender stuff, generic feminine gender in an English language book, what gives? And it takes a while to settle in how brilliant that is. The Radch have no concept of gender and so always use the feminine, and after a while you really stop asking yourself what gender the characters in the book really have. Does it really matter if Seivarden or Anaander Mianaai are male or female? It totally doesn't.
When things get rolling, you're totally glued to this book, or rather, I was. I want to learn more about the Radch, all the backstory, and I definitely want to see how Breq or rather One Esk, will go on when she's back on a ship, but one that's not herself.
Space Opera in 3 parts — long, grand, sci-fi, easy & fun to read. Incidentally the main civilisation of the book does not distinguish gender, which is represented in the book by giving everybody female pronouns, which is kind of a cool reading experience. I like the depiction of fragile consciousness of the protagonist.
I am torn between loving this book and hating it. For one, the book will be loved by fans of Iain M Banks. It will be an author's favorite. The quality of writing constantly tries to be complex, and while it falters sometimes, it comes out great when it doesn't. Space operas nowadays are going through a change. I feel the genre is trying to take a hard look at itself - and from being a over expository, feed the reader about various parameters in every scene, to believing in the reader's aptitude and let them understand the inner workings of the story from the big picture the author explains. Books like Leviathan Wakes and January dancer worked for me because of how distinct their characters were, and how them- coming together drives the story as it goes. But Ancillary Justice seemed one dimensional at best. The culture is distinct, …
I am torn between loving this book and hating it. For one, the book will be loved by fans of Iain M Banks. It will be an author's favorite. The quality of writing constantly tries to be complex, and while it falters sometimes, it comes out great when it doesn't. Space operas nowadays are going through a change. I feel the genre is trying to take a hard look at itself - and from being a over expository, feed the reader about various parameters in every scene, to believing in the reader's aptitude and let them understand the inner workings of the story from the big picture the author explains. Books like Leviathan Wakes and January dancer worked for me because of how distinct their characters were, and how them- coming together drives the story as it goes. But Ancillary Justice seemed one dimensional at best. The culture is distinct, but the world building is absent. Even the revealing of Raadch's culture reads not like a thread in a mystery story but like an encyclopedia. Even the big revelation at the end seemed 'meh' to me. If it were written as a low science fiction, group of entities acting in a universe we can relate to, I feel I'd have liked it more. The prose is .... different. Sentences like 'I was unsurprised to discover she hadn't meant it' reads as though someone purposefully tried to explain each step of the story in a convoluted manner. It is not a space opera except it has some space ships. Coming from a year full of Alastair Reynolds, James S.A Corey, Lois Mcmaster Bujold, this was a huge disappointment for me. You might like this if : you like ins and outs of characterization, and you are a disjointed reader - you read 5 pages on the bus and 5 at lunch and another 5 on the throne, as every time you read you'll be explained about the point of the story. You might not like this if : you love mystery, like a balance of world building and characterization, interaction, multi-dimentional personalities.
Believe me - many reviews go gaga about sentient ship and the culture. I felt it is just that. A sentient ship and a new culture.
