Ancillary Justice

Written by Ann Leckie

Narrated by Adjoa Andoh

The spectacular debut novel nominated for every major science fiction award in 2014, Ancillary Justice is the story of a warship trapped in a human body and her search for revenge. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Nebula Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, a James Tiptree Jr. honour and a Kitschie. Currently shortlisted for the Hugo Awards.

They made me kill thousands, but I only have one target now.

The Radch are conquerors to be feared - resist and they'll turn you into a 'corpse soldier' - one of an army of dead prisoners animated by a warship's AI mind. Whole planets are conquered by their own people.

The colossal warship called The Justice of Toren has been destroyed - but one ship-possessed soldier has escaped the devastation. Used to controlling thousands of hands, thousands of mouths, The Justice now has only two hands, and one mouth with which to tell her tale.

But one fragile, human body might just be enough to take revenge against those who destroyed her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Little, Brown (Hachette UK) Audio
• Release date: Aug 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781405532389

Reviews for Ancillary Justice

[bangerlm · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good sci-fi book with an interesting premise. Enjoyed it.

[martialalex92 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The plot got unnecesarily complicated towards the end, and the undying lover felt absurdly forced. Also while I understand the explanation for only using one gender of pronouns, it made parts way more confusing when you could not tell who was doing what. That said, the concept for the character is neat even if the backstory on the whole world needed more

[tuusannuuska-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie

This book requires you to really pay attention if you wish to have any hope of keeping up.

The narrator is basically what remains of a millenium old star ship AI. The ship AI's have soldiers, which are basically stolen humans from annexed cultures commandeered by the ships to use as avatars (or rather, ancillaries). Our narrator is one such ancillary, the only one that remains after the destruction of the ship itself, and the rest of the ship's ancillaries.

The world the story takes place in is a far future space empire ruled by a person who also happens to have around a thousand ancillaries herself. The empire explands by annexing any and all other cultures in it's wake, and it does it by rather brutal means. In recent years the pace of expansion has slowed, but not stopped. The annexed peoples are viewed as lesser (uncivilised) and bigotry is a built in feature for the ruling classes.

As the empire is very vast, it also has a lot of different languages that reflect the different cultures. A large linguistic (as well as cultural) element is gender. Our narrator being an AI in a human body, she doesn't really recognize gender. She knows they exits, but consistently makes mistakes in addressing people correctly (and this is one of the biggest tells she has for being an ancillary). The book uses the feminine default for all gendered words, and her inability to use the proper pronouns/addresses/words when speaking gendered languages is underlined on several occasions. This doesn't have much larger effect plotwise, but it's an interesting thing to note, reading this book in English. (I wonder how confusing this would have been to read translated into Finnish, which also doesn't have gender specific pronouns).

The plot is essentially a slow revenge story, the point of which is to introduce the reader to this vast world and to lay the groundwork for the sequels where the broader story will presumambly take place. The plot in this one is secondary, and mainly used to make the reader understand what the scope of the whole thing is, and I for one am very interested to find out what happens next.

[jennybeast · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Science fiction epic with an amazing narrator. I love everything about what she does with this character -- from the consistent gender ambiguities and confusions, to the multiple viewpoints, to the deep heart of the ship. Puzzles within puzzles and powers I haven't seen explored before. Reminds me a bit of the Left Hand of Darkness, and then again, like nothing I've seen before.

[wunder-62679 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is hard to believe this is a first novel -- the writing is so assured. The characters, the plot, the world, everything is spot on. One example: the places are sketched quickly, but I have strong images of all of them. I'm not sure how Leckie pulls that off, but it is the kind of skill that Jack Vance had.

Halfway through the book, I came up for air and decided that I was OK if it was standalone, but a series would be even better. It is a series!

[prefrontaller · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A well-structured, fast-paced space opera narrated from the perspective of an AI that controls a warship and "corpse soldiers". It's a fun read, but contains many tropes of the genre that I'm not a big fan of. For example, when the setting is a multi world galaxy, how can a few people who know each other coincidentally keep running into each other across worlds?

[venarain-354758 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is fucking awesome.

[kevn57-163679 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I can't say that I loved this right away, in fact for the first third of the book I wasn't sure why this was considered space opera, the reason I picked it up, and I was often confused as to what was going on. But once Breq was Breq then I started to enjoy the book, the character and the direction the story was moving.
I expected Breq to die at the end so I was pleasantly surprised to find her made a captain. I also hope that we learn more about the Presger in the next book.

[jamestomasino · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A really unique sci fi perspective. Really creative choices overall. I'm excited for the next book.

[gadosiahe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ancillary Justice is a fantastic addition to the science fiction genre, with an interestingly embodied narrator, unique characters, and a plot that mostly seems confusing until it all comes together.Like many first volumes in science fiction or fantasy series, there is a bit of a learning curve as the reader adjusts to the new universe, learning vocabulary, cultural markers, and so on. Ancillary Justice goes for the full immersion method, refusing to elaborate on things further than they would need in universe. This can make the reader feel lost for a little longer than usual, but it does create a more authentic immersion experience.Despite whatever struggles the reader may have adjusting to the universe of Ancillary Justice, the characters are so intriguing and the plot so mysterious and full of twists that it's difficult to put it down. Overall a fantastic book with promise for the remaining volumes in the series. 4/5 stars.

[adzebill · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Perfectly fine for what it is, didn't do much for me – not a shred of humour (unlike Ian M. Banks, which this is similar to), and the plot felt like it was factoring a quadratic equation rather than immersing me in a new world. Independently of this there's a really interesting SF use of pronouns, where the native language uses a female rather than male generic pronoun as gender's is actually not that important to the culture. Very interesting effect.

[jercox · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

AIs, spaceflight, and an empire that seems a cross between Roman and Chinese. All basic needs met, but human life valued very lightly much of the time.

[amphipodgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Note: recommended by Ken Shields and Lisa Dusseault

[rakerman_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Dynamic and creative. A bright arc of love and anger across the universe.

[neil_luvs_books · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book. Well done in terms of considering a culture in which gender is either meaningless or fluid or solely female. In addition, the first part of the book in which the AI, Breq, inhabits multiple flesh and blood bodies which are able to sense all places at the same was both confusing and interesting. It took work on the part of this reader to understand and try and see, hear and smell multiple setting at the same time. I was really impressed by Leckie’s efforts. I wonder if this is sort of what it is like to be a fly with a multifaceted eye or a tree that has multiple suckers spread over a large field? What does it mean to be one entity that has many bodies. And then to have all of those bodies suddenly cut off from each other? This book, his series, is well deserving of all of the accolades it has received.

[wickenden-285487 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great fun.

[unsquare_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley.

Ancillary Justice is science fiction crammed full to the brim with wild ideas. The main character, Breq, is an “ancillary soldier” cut off from her ship for almost twenty years, but she isn’t exactly human, at least not by the standards of her society, the Radch. The Radch, it seems, were aggressive about expansion over thousands of years. As part of that expansion they captured entire civilizations and turned the leftover bodies into these ancillaries – soldiers that shared a mind with their ships, that were effectively as much a part of their ships as any piece of the hull. Corpse soldiers, to quote a slang term.

Breq, who comes from a ship called the Justice of Toren, has spent the past twenty years tirelessly working towards revenge against Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch, who shares one similarity with Breq and other ancillaries: she has thousands of bodies under her control. This, naturally, complicates Breq’s plan for revenge. In the current day scenes, Breq searches for an artifact that will help her carry out her plans while also caring for a petulant drug-addicted former solider who once served on her ship. These alternate with flashbacks to Breq’s time spent as an ancillary soldier on the last planet annexed by the Radch.

Leckie does a great job of slowly revealing more and more about Breq’s past and the nature of the tragedy that befell her ship. She also takes fairly simple building blocks and turns them into fascinating philosophical mind-benders. What, after all, does it mean for Breq’s I to mean the ship Justice of Toren but also all the hundreds of ancillary soldiers in her hold? The narrative is simultaneously first-person and omniscient, jumping from place to place as the ship’s many perspectives build to a greater whole.

Leckie also sets up the Radch society as one that does not distinguish between the genders when speaking. In practice, this means that everyone in the book is ”she” regardless of gender. Further complicating matters for Breq is the fact that she has a hard time distinguishing gender traits when in other societies, and tends to use incorrectly gendered pronouns. At first I found this a bit confusing, but once I got used to it, I found myself not really worrying about the gender of characters. Leckie drops hints here and there as to the actual gender of certain characters, but in practice it doesn’t actually matter.

The scope of Ancillary Justice feels simultaneously personal and global; Breq’s actions are deeply rooted in events from her past, but the result of her fight against the Lord of the Radch could have far-reaching repercussions. The world-building is pitch-perfect, and never feels heavy-handed or overwhelming. As soon as I finished this book, I checked to see if Leckie has any plans to continue writing in this world, and she does – apparently this is the first book in a loose trilogy. That said, it feels like Breq’s quest is contained; the end does set up possible future stories, but I couldn’t begin to guess where else Leckie might take the world of the Radch. However, I find that exciting.

I think my favorite part of this book was the way that Leckie took so many truly alien elements and made them feel natural and believable. The characters are human, but a type of human thousands of years removed from our society, and changed in many strange ways. We don’t ever meet any non-human characters, but they lurk just at the edge of the story, menacing and dangerous.

I can’t wait for the next book in this series, and I’ll definitely be checking out Leckie’s short stories as soon as possible.

[james_patrick_joyce · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Impressive.

Interesting play with gender pronouns. Shines the light on subtle and unconscious stereotyping and prejudices, based on gender. The default, in The Radtch, is "she". In some "backwater" planets, sexual gender identification is important, but in civilized lands, it's not.

Artificial Intelligence, corpse soldiers, an Emperor who can be many places at the same time, and a mission of vengeance that spans light-years.

I'm definitely interested in reading the further adventures of Justice of Toren... I mean One Esk. Or a new being, self-created... Either way, I'm definitely reading more.

Still facedown on the floor, Seivarden said, in a small voice, “Breq?”

“Not Breq,” said the Mianaai on the left. “Justice of Toren.”

“Justice of Toren One Esk,” I corrected, dropping all pretense of a Gerentate accent, or human expression. I was done pretending. It was terrifying, because I knew I couldn’t live long past this, but also, oddly, a relief. A weight gone.

[ashleytylerjohn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Terrific. Yes, at first, somewhat offputting with regards to gender (I would have been okay with "they/them" throughout, but "she" was just as annoying as "he" would have been), but once I was used to it I could settle in more, and it was a great story--fresh, inventive, a marvelous piece of world(s) building, a star-in-the-making protagonist (I mostly pictured Janet "not a girl") from The Good Place), and it didn't suffer from excess-stupid-nameitis which has derailed many an SF or fantasy novel for me. You know the type: "Galahedron polished her sxcizitar, the main musical instrument from her home planet of Kqath, while eyeing Commander Blitis warily," I just can't read that stuff. Luckily, it usually signifies badly-written books, so I'm well-spared. This is not that.

Have already arranged for book 2 in the series. What a wonderful surprise, so early this year.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve!

[dmturner · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It was hard to get going with this book, but once I got about a sixth of the way in, I was able to keep moving forward. There's a heart at the core of the book that makes one identify with the immense and fragmented Justice of Toren, now represented only by a single ancillary, and though it was well enough resolved I was left wanting to read the sequel. Nice job.

[wearyhobo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Full of ideas, certainly, but I need a bit more plot than this.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Space Opera, military, sentient beings, deep space. A debut novel by Ann Leckie. Quite a world building first book.

[sarcher-3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I started to be concerned after the main character mused about the gender of a bartender for the third time in the first dozen pages, and it didn't get better than that. Having a civilization with an unusual approach to gender is a great place to jump off (see the Left Hand of Darkness), but why is your genderless book so consumed with talking about gender? I gave up after I realized that, even though feminine pronouns were being used at one point, that no one was actually a woman (why weren't neutral pro-nouns being used?). At that point I figured I had missed something and gave up.I made it forty pages, so I figured two stars is fair - maybe it was a reading comprehension problem.

[tinodidriksen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Compelling from start to finish. The weaving of past and present is well done, the characters are interesting, and the story just works. I don't even know why it's so good, but I have nothing bad to say about it. Rating 5/5.

[allison_s-802575 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

*loud crying*

It took me longer than it should have to read this simply because I knew the VERY SAD THING was going to happen but I didn't want it to. Once I got beyond that part I breezed through the rest.

LOVED THIS SO MUCH.

I think the "self-aware AI" narration was super well done and SO compelling.

Barely anyone was white. Everyone was gender neutral/fluid and/or assumed female because of the default pronouns. Fabulous.

Starting "Ancillary Mercy" not nearly soon enough.

[leslie398 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow, what a ride! I still have a hard time envisioning how the Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai, and the AIs functioned but the ancillaries were an interesting concept. I liked the way Leckie structured the book, alternating between past and present events until the reader comprehends the situation.

[kardaen-358849 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Probably my favorite novel in the past decade. The concepts of the book, a splintered ship AI, with one sliver that survives betrayal, becoming the protagonist was absolutely fascinating. The use of pronouns has been much discussed, and it certainly adds something to the text, as a thought-provoking not quite gimmick. The society in which this takes place does not recognize differences sex in its vocabulary, and it does impact the reading of each character in a compelling way. Eventually, it becomes clear, but it really makes you think about stereotypes. The story is heroic and amazing and left me wanting more.

[dogcopter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the most interesting story I've read in a while. Intellectually challenging but well worth the effort. I was also surprised/disturbed at how resistant my brain is to not gendering characters, and how it defaults to making people with wealth/power male.

[pdcread · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The Radch empire is the primary power in this galaxy set thousands of years hence. They have lots of smart technologies and ships and a society that is gender neutral. Each starship uses ancillaries, humanoids that have a fragment of the ships intelligence built into them.

The story is about the last remaining ancillary from a ship called the Justice of Toren. Breq is seeking revenge after her ship, the Justice of Toren had been destroyed two decades previously. As she seeks a way to get to the Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai, she finds a former colleague, Seivarden, on an ice planet. As she nurses her back to health she discovers what happened to her ship.

Posing as a tourist and with Seivarden accompanying her, she makes it to the home planet and sets about seeking an audience with Anaander Mianaai, a multi faceted personality.

I did like some of the ideas in the book. The society that she has created is solid and plausible, with numerous details added to add depth to the story. The plot was reasonable too, with a unique protagonist, being the last element of a ship with almost super powers at times.

Wasn't keen on the jumping back and forth between now and the story 20 years ago. Would have been stronger if that had been all together and then moved onto the actual story of Breq's revenge.

Will give the second book a go, as there is some strong themes that did work.

[thegreatape-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Disappointing. Ideas and characters had a lot of potential, but but the execution was done in by plodding pacing and bland prose.