Lake of Souls

I have been a long-time Ann Leckie fan, but in long-form I only enjoyed the Imperial Radch books, and I don't usually enjoy short stories at all, so I was hesitant approaching this, but it was mind-blowingly good. Each story had a new take, even when it felt like it was going to retread speculative fiction genre conventions. Almost all of the stories were about negotiation, persuasion and diplomacy and I liked that it felt like they were in dialogue with each other, but each story had a unique perspective to add.

I thought the first third, the stand alone stories, were shockingly the strongest: I really liked the first-contact and symbiosis set up of the titular story, which really immersed me in the setting and world very quickly.

Hesperia and Glory also packed a punch in its short pages, about how perception defines reality

Another Word for World, which is clearly a descendent of Ursula Le Guin's A Word for World is Forest cut to the quick with its exploration on how well-meaning people could still fail to connect across linguistic and cultural boundaries

The imperial Radch stories were in fact the weakest, in part because they were all quite distant from the Radch we know. If they hadn't been marked as belonging to the same universe, they could easily have stood alone. The only one I remember is She Commands Me and I Obey, another great look at negotiation and what happens when we take the status quo for granteed.

The Raven Tower stories were somehow very successful (even though I really didn't like the Raven Tower?) with the one exception that each of them recited the rules for the gods not being able to lie – it would have been better if they'd been edited to be in a collection made to be read together. Of those, the Snake's Wife was by far the strongest – a disturbing read, but captivating and really a capstone on the themes of negotiation, manipulative practices and the ways that scheming to get the upper hand can fail.

Overall, a really strong collection organized along a powerful central theme with very little redundancy or “duds”

Ann Leckie is one of those authors that I feel like is writing specifically for me. Alien political intrigue centering around translation devices? Check. Small gods wrecking havoc on neolithic societies? Check. Complex exploration of gender subverting our every expectation? Check check check. She's one of the best out there, and I feel like he doesn't get the attention she deserves. Definitely read her novels before stepping into this collection as the background for both The Raadchaai empire and the Raven Tower are quite important for 2/3 fo the stories, but you should really read all those anyway.