Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie

Ancillary Justice, and the rest of the Imperial Radch trilogy, is excellent. This is to be expected, since it won every big sci-fi award. With that in mind, I'll just briefly discuss the three aspects I enjoyed most of the series.

The first aspect is the way the books explore what it means to be human. Humanity has spread through the galaxy, creating a giant empire called the Radch, ruled over by the more-than-human Anaander Mianaai, a consciousness spread across thousands of bodies. We follow Breq, an ancillary, or human body used by a spaceship -- much like Anaander, she began a single consciousness spread across many bodies. But, in the first book, we first meet Breq as a lone ancillary roaming human space outside the Radch, cut off from the rest of herself. We spend the book learning how she became this way, and exploring her compulsion for vengeance. Most importantly, though, the author successfully and thoroughly conveys what it would feel like to be a totally different type of consciousness (that of a spaceship!) in a convincing, engaging way.

The second aspect, closely related to the first, is the portrayal of nonhuman species. In space around the Radch, there are several other types of intelligent life, of which the Presger are the most ominous and mysterious. These beings more and more prominently as the books go on, letting the author slowly build the feeling of how truly other they are. Much like the aliens in Peter Watts' Blindsight, it is satisfying to read well-written, non-anthropomorphized space denizens.

The third aspect is that the story is built almost entirely through casual, small, quaint interactions. Breq jaunts around the galaxy, meeting individuals and going through seemingly insignificant, tiny explorations of will and character. And yet, like raindrops forming a lake, these little scenes all add up to become a full and rich universe. It is intimate, charming, and delectable. No scene, whether meeting a child in a temple, or going to a farm, or piling boxes in a corridor, is unimportant or irrelevant to the galactic scale of Breq's vengeance.

Altogether, I thoroughly enjoyed this series. I'm excited to read the other novels and short stories set in this same universe!