Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie was definitely the SFF book everyone was talking about last year and when it came to awards I think it was shortlisted for just about everything going and won a fair few of them, specifically the :

Hugo Award 2014 for Best Novel
Nebula Award 2013 for Best Novel
Arthur C. Clarke Award 2014 for best science fiction novel of the year.
British Science Fiction Association Award 2013 for Best Novel (jointly with Ack-Ack Macaque by Gareth Powell)
Locus Award 2014 for Best First Novel.
Kitschies “Golden Tentacle” 2013 for Best Debut Novel.

Quite a haul, huh? So as you can doubtless imagine I’ve wanted to read it for some time.

Interestingly, though, when I first checked it out in a bookstore by browsing the first few pages, it didn’t appeal and I bought Nicola Griffiths’ Hild instead. ” I know”, how can that be — but at the time the opening few pages just didn’t gel. But as those who follow my reading ruminations will know, I’ve spoken before of how mood and circumstances can affect my response to a work, particularly if I am really tired or life is generally full of stress and busy-ness. So it may not surprise you to also know that I didn’t necessarily jettison all thought of reading Ancillary Justice — especially given all those accolades — but resolved to return to it at another time.

Return I did and can now assure that I’ve joined the masses who have enjoyed this book. Yet despite finding a great deal about it that I liked very much, it did not completely blow me away.  Before I embark on telling you the whys and wherefores of both responses, however, I shall outline the basic premise.

Also a warning: if you haven’t already read this book I’m not sure I can address one of my two main quibbles without SPOILERS, so consider yourself warned.

The Premise:

The story is a space opera set in a galaxy-spanning future empire and follows a protagonist called Breq. As the story unfolds, the reader learns that Breq is an ancillary soldier, basically a kind of cyborg, that was once, like all other such soldiers, a component part of the AI, Justice of Toren, that comprised one of the Radch Empire’s stellar battleships. The sole survivor of an act of betrayal that we eventually learn is both personal and also saw the destruction of Justice of Toren with all its ancillaries and human crew, Breq is now on a vengeance mission.

What I Thought:

I’m a sucker for space opera so any story that comprises starships, space stations, and galaxy-spanning empires is going to speak to me. My epic fantasist’s heart will always incline toward a quest journey as well and if you add in some interesting worldbuilding, especially worldbuilding with a strong cultural dimension, then you’ll have me reading along.

I was definitely reading along with Ancillary Justice: more, I was eager to get back to it between reading sessions. Like most others before me, my attention was hooked by the Radch Empire’s universal use of the personal pronoun “she” and the gradual realization that all the “she’s” I was meeting could equally well be female or male. After a while I got used to it and just focused on the characters and their stories regardless of gender — but that, you may rightly agree, is an outstanding achievement in and of itself.

I also really liked the world of Shis’urna and particularly the city of Ors, where the betrayal that set Breq on her vengeance course commenced. I thought it was a deft depiction of the imperial/colonial process, charting the relationships between the imperial administration and particularly the practice of divide and rule between the colonised cultures.

I also loved the character of Lieutenant Awn, the military administrator in Ors, who is possibly the story’s most sympathetic character. It is Awn who provides the human face to the political betrayal that eventually engulfs Justice of Toren. The development of the character from Ancillary One Esk Ninteen/Justice of Toren into the individual, Breq, is also a fascinating aspect of the book.

A great deal of attention has been given to the book’s treatment of gender and imperialism/colonialism. Another really interesting element is the story’s treatment of SF’s ongoing theme of how space travel will affect socio-political and individual relationships, including identity, as space-time and distance stretches communication. It’s a constant theme of Ursula Le Guin’s SF, and CJ Cherryh’s Downbelow Station was based on the disintegration of socio-political constructs as space travel and settlement expanded. The same tension lies at the heart of the Ancillary Justice story and like Hannu Rajaniemi’s Jean Le Flambeur series it explores what happens when the use of multiple personality constructs breaks down and begins to generate its own conflicts. So although far from a completely new SF idea I like what Leckie does with it—which to me is the important thing, not whether a theme is “the new, the new.”

Oh, and there’s a first contact aspect to the story as well, with an alien, powerful, and not particularly well-disposed species, the Presger, hovering on the fringes of the narrative in a way that bodes potential significance for the subsequent books in the series.

All fascinating stuff which together make Ancillary Justice a very enjoyable read.

There were two main aspects of the story I didn’t like so well. As mentioned, Lieutenant Awn was the only character I found truly likeable and Breq the only one with a well-developed arc. I did not find any of the other characters strongly drawn and Seivarden, arguably the story’s second character, felt colourless.

Despite this, I remained engaged by the story throughout—until the end, which fell a little flat. [WARNING: now comes the SPOILER.] The reason for this, I think, was that I was puzzled — because it turns out that Breq has been on her vengeance quest for twenty years in pursuit of a character whom she knows is only one of multiple personality copies of the betrayer. So, effectively, she’s known from the start that even if her quest is successful it will achieve nothing. I also felt that dichotomy was glossed over by the story, rather than being addressed, hence my perplexity.

Yet, overall, I still enjoyed Ancillary Justice and would recommend it to other readers, especially those who have also enjoyed science fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi, CJ Cherryh, and Lois McMaster Bujold.

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Additional Information:

I read the UK/AUS/NZ mass market paperback edition, 386 pp, of Ancillary Justice (2013), published by Orbit, an imprint of Little, Brown.

Orbit is also my UK publisher but I purchased my copy rather than requesting a free copy for review.