This book is due back at the library today, so this review is written in a bit of a rush. This is one of my infrequent forays into science fiction. I really enjoyed it and may have to explore further. I read that this is a “space opera” a term I am unfamiliar with, but it makes sense in that Ancillary Justice is a big story with heroines and villains. Ancillary Justice is set in an intergalactic empire of humanoids known as the Raadchai. The […]
Ancillary Space Opera
Target: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) and Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch #2) Profile: Science Fiction, Space Opera The Imperial Radch series is a relatively simple little space opera, in the classic sense of the term. Spanning hundreds, if not thousands of years, multiple star systems and a variety of cultural influences, it’s a series firmly rooted in the tropes of its genre. While Ancillary Justice does wonderful things with those ideas and concepts, building a surprisingly compelling setting and cast, the series as […]
Must-Read Sci-Fi
One of my favorite books of 2014 was Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. It’s a sci-fi novel that won pretty much every prize awarded for that genre and features one of the coolest protagonists I’ve ever encountered in literature: Breq, an “ancillary” or corpse soldier who has been untethered from the collective consciousness of her ship but retains amazing physical and cognitive powers. As one character states in book 2, “[Breq] is pretty fucking badass.” In book 1, Breq was on a mission to reach the […]
Do Androids Dream of … Revenge?
With this 2013 novel, Ann Leckie has won the Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke and, as of last week, Hugo awards, and has been nominated for the Philip K. Dick award. Ancillary Justice has a complex, fascinating plot and in its protagonist a kickass corpse soldier. I picked up the book because the author is a woman (serves my quest to read 50 books by 50 women this year) and it has won so many prestigious awards. I’m often wary of Sci Fi — it’s not […]
All in one, one in all. New convenient packaging!
First of all, if you like science fiction at all, this is THE BOOK you should be reading right now. Just stop what you’re doing and go buy it, or reserve it at the library. It’s important you get in on this now before everybody loves it and then the inevitable contrarians pop up to tell everyone how much they dislike it and how everyone who likes it is probably dumb and/or reading it wrong and really it means THIS and HOW DARE YOU. And if […]