Ancillary Sword

I really wanted to love Ancillary Sword, but sadly it just didn't click for me. It wasn't for lack of effort. In a way it was frustrating because Leckie's prose can be quite amazing at times.

The first book, Ancillary Justice, was universally beloved and won just about every scifi book award that there was to win. I understood what people saw in it, but there was so much in the book that frustrated me. Leckie showed her skills as a tremendous world builder (as everyone has noted), but sadly the characters were a bit lacking.

Leckie set out to fix that in the second book by having it mostly a long character study of Justice of Toren/Breq, the corpse AI that lost her ship that served as her central hub sentenced to a life in a human body. Her tale of vengeance led to a climatic face off in the first book and this one picked up directly after and at times it was hard to grasp where the plot was heading.

It wasn't due to depth or complication but instead because of the pacing and what the main focus of the book turned out to be. Leckie has proven to be a slow starter, in fact, I almost put down Ancillary Justice until I got to about the 40% mark when it picked up, with Ancillary Sword it probably didn't pick up until somewhere near the realm of 70%.

Her prose can be great, like I said, but at other times frustrating. Why is everyone gesturing? The word “gesture” appears in some form what feels like every page on both books and while I can understand that Breq is an AI who views things a bit differently, she seems to have a superior intellect and I'm sure can break down these gestures into more depth than just “she gestured agreement” and so forth.

Most of the book felt like something that most authors would have summed up briefly within a a few pages, a few chapters at most. Instead most of our time is spent with Breq seeing how the common people live. It was a valuable thing for the character to experience in her quest, undoubtedly, but the presentation and the events felt rather uninspired. There was also the fact that the reader was given no real insight as to what Breq was after throughout most of the journey.

There was similar insight missing from the first book early on, which made it such a slog to endure. I've seen a lot of people saying “well, I didn't understand it, but maybe I'm just smart enough.” Readers have to be unafraid to take authors to task on things like this. Ancillary Justice wasn't confusing because it flew over the readers' heads, but because there wasn't enough detail or insight into the characters to get the reader invested. This book was similar to that.

So if AJ was missing character development and had a fascinating plot, AS was missing the plot and saw a lot of character development. Hopefully Ancillary Mercy pieces it all together because I truly want to love these books and Leckie's writing, but there are just a few little things that make these books more of a chore than they should be.

Imagine you write a novel that wins basically every major sci-fi award in English speaking world. (Not that awards actually matter.) Partly because you write great orwellian novel from the future with original spin of AI being the main character in human skin fighting an all knowing other AI that is simultaneously at war with itself. Partly, I fear, because you inject your woke ideology into it but it's not overhanded and it's enjoyable even for someone like me so activists prop it up while normies don't mind.

Now imagine you throw that original worldbuilding out the window and write a sequel confined into one space station and tea plantation on the planet. Promise of epic space opera? Nowhere to be found. Promise of over the top woke social talking points? Everywhere.

There's more characters in here so the inability to differentiate gender, to imagine what the characters look like is almost impossible at this point. Author uses only feminine pronouns so reader has no idea who is male or female. Additionally, it was established in the first book that AI with IQ probably somewhere above 300 can't tell a difference between men and women... On top of that literally everybody, even characters on ships who are from various parts of the galaxy are all “dark skinned or darker skinned”. Tea plantation is a metaphor for cotton plantations and workers are slaves in all but name.

But even despite all of that I'd be okay with the book if it moved plot forward or if characterization of anybody, ANYBODY was better. But this is a filler, a spin-off. Maybe it should've been the first act of Justice's sequel instead of whole book. It doesn't even much feel like a setup for sequel until the last 20 pages.

There's no characterization of Breq's crew. They are all human but since previous captain liked them to act like ancillaries (ship's AI in human bodies) they act like them. They're robots without a hint of character except for Kalr Five's love of porcelain, lol. And near the end they say they like living like this. Has the author ever talked to a soldier? To another human being for that matter? Is she in love with Star Trek's Borgs?
I guess that's how author masks her biggest weakness because character's from space station and plantation are also just as flat.

I fear the conclusion in Mercy won't conclude anything if it's going to be in any way similar to this book. If I ever even bother to waste more time on this series.

I loved Ancillary Justice SO much and then I desperately needed to take on the rest of the series IMMEDIATELY. I kind of regret rushing through the series rather than savoring it. Nonetheless, I think Sword, while struggling a little with the pacing problems of a middle book in a trilogy, brought a lot of unique strengths to the series. I particularly liked Leckie's take on colonialism. I felt like she captured the ways in which SciFi can be a lens to reflect back on the issues of today, without weakening her own imaginative and unique setting. This is definitely a smaller book than Ancillary Justice – more focused on Breq and her crew, their interpersonal relationships, contrasted with the interpersonal relationships of those on the station and downwell and how those ultimately result in systemic flaws. I liked to have this lull in the series to really bathe in Leckie's universe and its social rules.

Pros: fascinating characters, interesting narrative approach, develops new world-building aspects

Cons: character driven

A week after the events of Ancillary Justice, Breq, now fleet captain and assigned to Mercy of Kalr, departs on Anaander Mianaai's orders to Athoek to make sure the system stays safe. In addition to her experienced lieutenants, Seivarden and Ekalu (of the Kalr), she has a new 17 year old one, Tisarwat, to train. Once they arrive at the station, they find a suspicious captain, disturbed by the lack of communication after the attack on Omaugh Palace and the destruction of several gates, racial tensions, and minor issues covering larger problems that need to be addressed.

As with the first book, the real aspect of interest is in how Breq sees the world. You don't get flash backs to when she was Justice of Toren, though that's often in her thoughts, instead you get her trying to keep up with frequent run downs of the sort of information she would have have had instantaneously as a ship, sent to her by her ship, Mercy of Kalr. It's an interesting way of seeing things, and allows Breq to pretend she's still one part of a larger whole while also being a narrative means of showing the reader what's happening in places outside Breq's physical sphere. There is a plot, but in many ways this feels like a character driven novel because Breq's presence is so overpowering. If you don't like her unique way of seeing the world, you won't enjoy this book.

Breq comes across as a tough as nails captain. Sometimes she's too tough, pushing her crew beyond what she should, something I suspected would eventually cause her problems, but her extensive experience means she's able to pull back at just the right moment. Even knowing what Breq was trying to do, I thought she was too hard on Tisarwat at times. Not only had the lieutenant been through a traumatic experience with little recovery time, she's given little to no positive reinforcement when she does things right. So while Tisarwat was an interesting character, seeing her through Breq's eyes made her less sympathetic than she probably deserved to be. It was fun seeing her grow up and mature.

I was a little surprised at the number of secrets she kept from her crew, her true identity as Justice of Toren and what happened with Tisarwat being the main ones, but it does make sense that the crew might balk at such things, so keeping them secret probably made sense.

There's more information about how the military works and there's a unique supporting cast. I enjoyed learning more about the military and political politics, both between the ships but also how it applies to a station and planet once they get to Athoek. I'm hoping we learn more about the Presger in the next book. What little was revealed here merely whet the appetite.