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.

Angela Carter

And then your portrait on the back

so neutral and complete

standing full-length

posed I don’t remember where.

Eyes sky black

you stood unsmiling

suggesting there were realer worlds within.

Your books dealt much in mirrors

which might have led me to suppose

that you were one yourself

and I’d step through the flimsy sheet

that held you to your words

and turn and, face inside your face,

watch the empty space where I had been.
.

© Tim Jones

Published in Boat People, HeadworX, 2008. Reproduced here with permission.

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I first featured Tim’s Angela Carter in a 2013 series on ekphrastic poems — works that respond to a work of art.

As well as loving the poem, I also enjoyed Tim’s commentary, “speaking” to the poem:

“When I was younger, I went through phases of intensively reading the entire oeuvre – or as much of the oeuvre as I could lay my hands on – of specific authors.

One such author was Angela Carter (1940-1992), who is probably now best known for her late novel Night at the Circus, but whose earlier novels veered closer to science fiction. At a time when I was finding out about feminism, I found Angela Carter’s strongly but unconventionally feminist fiction both fascinating and challenging. The photo that made such an impression on me was on the back cover of The Passion of New Eve, her 1977 science fiction novel (though “science fiction” is a pale term to use to describe Carter’s lush, highly symbolic fiction) – and the poem reflects my fascination with the questions of masculine and feminine identity found both in this novel and throughout Carter’s fiction.

I get the impression that Angela Carter’s fiction isn’t as well known or widely read twenty years after her death as it deserves to me. If you’d like to know more about her and her work, check out this Scriptorium profile of her by Jeff VanderMeer, or this shorter 2006 profile in the Independent (UK).“

I have very much enjoyed focusing on Tim’s poetry again over the past few weeks. If you haven’t already had the chance to check the poems out, just click on:

The First Artist On Mars

Thinning

The stars, Natasha

Or visit his website: Books In The Trees.

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About The Poet:

Tim Jones is a New Zealand poet, author and editor who was awarded both the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature and a Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2010. His latest book, co-edited with PS Cottier, is The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry (2014).

For more, see http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here.

On the 1st of every month, I post on the Supernatural Underground — which means I have a post up RIGHT NOW — and in the past month we’ve been having a bit of a revamp (heh, no pun intended! 😀 ) of our look — so worth popping over just to check out the new masthead.

But over the past two months I’ve been running a Tuckerization draw to allow one fortunate ( 😉 ) commentator to have her/his name immortalized in another piece of fiction to be featured on the Supernatural Underground this year — and today the draw has been made & the successful commenter named. So you may wish to check it out.

But wait, there’s more: I also link to a few other short stories, so the reasons keep piling up to click on:

The “Immortalization In Fiction” Contest — We Have A Result! Plus More On Getting Fictional!

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Women’s History Month

March 8 is International Women’s Day and March is international Women’s History Month — and as mentioned a few weeks back, I’m participating with a guest post as part of Australian author/editor, Gillian’s Polack’s, Women’s History Month blog carnival. The carnival will comprise women writers posting on the theme of  “Staying the Course.”

My post is titled “In The Case Of Big Life Decisions, Follow Your Heart…” and I will link here (sometime in March, for sure 😉 ) once it has posted.

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An Interview With Lorna Suzuki

Also coming up, tentatively for March 8 (March 9 here in NZ), I am being interviewed by Canadian author, Lorna Suzuki (whose YA Imago series has been optioned by a major film company.)

Again, I’ll post a link here when the interview is live.

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Holding Out For A Heroine

Also in March, I’ll be checking back in at SF Signal (where I’ve previously contributed the Fun With Friends and Having Fun With Epic Fantasy post series), this time with Holding Out For A Heroine, where I’ll be featuring some of my favourite leading ladies in the Fantasy genre, discussing both who they are and why I believe they rock. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

So there you go: plenty happening in March. 😉

One of my new year resolutions was to make 2015 my Year of Living Fictionally in a number of ways—but one of them was:

“…to have a wee bit more of a focus on Helen Lowe Fiction generally on the blog this year: so watch this space & we’ll see what transpires.”

A little later, I promised that:

“…once we roll around into February, I’ll also be starting the Year of Living Fictionally here, although I really commenced that on January 1, with Bird of Passage [on the Supernatural Underground].”

Well, I have started, because one of my ways of living fictionally is to be getting Daughter Of Blood into production and as reported on Thursday, I’m doing the final manuscript tweaks for that right now. (I also posted a wee sneak preview of the text—no spoilers though!)

But in terms of having more of a focus on other Helen Lowe fiction I haven’t quite got there yet—but I shall be starting next Sunday with another short story. Something from the legendary history oeuvre, I’m thinking (although all thinking of that ilk may be subject to change without notice), which I’ll post over a couple of Sundays…All part of helping bridge the gap until Daughter Of Blood is published and also to have fun with other genres/subgenres of fiction along the way.

So I shall hope to see you back here next Sunday. 🙂

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And don’t forget I’ll have a new post up on the Supernatural Underground shortly after 4 pm (NZ time) today.

Nope, just checked and this be no Leap Year, which means today is last call time for all things February…

…and bidding farewell to February ’15 means it’s also your very last chance—up until midnight, US Eastern Standard Time—to avail thyself of the Tuckerization contest I’ve had running via the Supernatural Underground.

Tuckerization, mmm, yes… Blog readers nod wisely, then: “Um, what is Tuckerization, precisely?”

Precisely, it’s when someone’s real life name is used for a character in a work of fiction—yup, that’s right: it’s an opportunity to be immortalized in a work of fiction. w00t!

UK/AU/NZ Cover

Since the launch of The Heir of Night, I’ve been doing a Tuckerization for each of the subsequent books in The Wall Of Night series. So Jan Butterworth gave her name to a character in The Gathering Of The Lost and Cheryl Graham won the launch contest to give her name to a character in Daughter Of Blood. (By way of an aside, my view and that of my editors and beta readers is that the character that stepped up for Cheryl’s name is pretty durned awesome—but there is no question that Cheryl is also having to be very patient in waiting to meet her fictionalized namesake. :-/ )

US cover

Still, Tuckerizations aren’t just for novels. They can occur equally well in shorter fiction, so when I decided to feature my short story, Bird of Passage, on the Supernatural Underground over January and February I thought I’d run a wee Tuckerization opportunity to go along with that. (For a future short story to be published either here or on the Supernatural Underground. It won’t necessarily be a SFF work either, but could be contemporary realism, like Bird of Passage, or “…anything, really” genre-wise.)

Bird of Passage image

Interestingly, although there have been a pleasingly goodly number of reader views of Bird of Passage, there does not seem to have been a corresponding enthusiasm for the Tuckerization. All the better for those who have commented, of course! 😀

Nonetheless, I thought I should post a reminder today that this constitutes your final opportunity to put your name in the draw for fictional immortalization. 😉

You can do so by either commenting here or on Bird of Passage before midnight, Saturday 28 February, US Eastern Standard Time.

Alternatively, you could opt to stick with the majority and just read the story, if you havena done so already: 🙂

Bird Of Passage Part 1

Bird Of Passage Part 2

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Speaking of future fiction, I spoke a wee while back about making 2015 my Year Of Living Fictionally—so I’ll be back to talk about that tomorrow.

credit: PJ Fitzpatrick

Currently, I’m taking a word that means either a “bad guy”, e.g. ruffian or rogue, or a “rough diamond”, such as  a roughneck, and matching it with a character from my novels.

As in the A Geography Of Haarth series, each entry is accompanied by a relevant passage from the books, which could be drawn from one of the two Wall Of Night series novels currently published, or my Kids/YA standalone, Thornspell.

The definitions are taken from Merriam Webster Online, my current go-to dictionary when writing

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Nemesis:  an opponent or enemy that is very difficult to defeat

I just had to include the “nemesis” as a homage to Buffy, particularly Season 6 where the singularly inept trio of villains refer to themselves as the “nemesises.” 😉

Today’s “nemesis”  is of a slightly different order.

Nirn:

“No?” Emuun was silent, his eyes half closed. Then they opened again. “Speaking of dead heralds, I see your adept, Jharin, has abandoned the last face he was wearing.”

Nirn’s chill eyes considered him. “As it happens, the face abandoned him. He could not hold it, even through last night.”

Emuun whistled again. “There must be more to these couriers than I thought. A power to resist, perhaps, rather than to attack or coerce?” He shrugged. “Although I was surprised—for all the screams and agony that delighted our assassin allies—when even your mindflaying could not break the Ishnapuri pair.”

“Which should not have been possible!” Nirn snapped. He took a few hasty steps up and down the room. “There was always a kernel of resistance, no matter the subtlety or sheer brute strength of my work. No one knows the mindflaying better than I, yet still they escaped, slipping into death before I was done with them.”

~  from © The Gathering Of The Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two: Chapter 9 — Portside

A while back, I shared a sneak preview of the synopsis for Daughter of Blood.

I’m currently doing my very last read-through of the edited Daughter of Blood manuscript before it goes to production (that’s copyediting, proofing etc. as a precursor to the whole sales, marketing, publicity gig) and was struck by a couple of paragraphs that I hope may share a flavour of the text without giving away any spoilers.

So here they are—another wee sneak preview, to mitigate (if not make up for) this week’s by-no-means-great news that Daughter of Blood will not be published until January 2016. 🙁

“…Malian gathered herself. Breathing in the resin of the pines, mingled with acrid earth, she brought the two places together in her mind, folding the distance between them. For a moment she stood poised between the quiet stable with its scents of horses and leather and hay, and the darkness beneath the pines with its thickly layered needles and scattered cones. She smelt sheep dung, too, scattered amongst the tree roots—and opened her portal, out of the stable and into the hollow in the foothills.

Peta, Raven’s mare, tossed up her head, but he spoke a quiet word and she steadied. Hani pricked her ears forward and then both horses followed Raven through the gate. Malian waited until the mares’ tails had swished clear before following, letting the opening close as soon as she stood on the foothill side. The imprint of the stable lingered briefly against the darkness and then there was just the pine grove, with the wind sighing down from the high peaks, bringing the chill of snow.”

~  from © Daughter Of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three

(I don’t think it’s a spoiler—or certainly not much of one!—to reveal that Malian and Raven are traveling together, at least at this point in the story, since we left them together at the end of The Gathering Of The Lost.)

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And another sneak peek… This one crept into a recent interview I did with Lorna Suzuki, but I re-posted it here:

Another Wee Snippet From Daughter Of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three

~ by Rebecca Fisher

In 1997, the following advertisement appeared in the classified section of the Backwoods Home Magazine:

The true story behind the ad is simply that magazine employee John Silveira was asked by his publisher for something extra to fill up the classified pages. He duly obliged, perhaps thinking his little joke would go unnoticed, or be dismissed as a scam.

But a few years later, after the advertisement made its way onto the internet, it exploded into a fully-fledged meme. As Silveira says on the magazine’s website, his post office box was flooded with replies from people all across the world, intrigued by his classified and desperate for more information.

It’s not difficult to see why. Silveira’s advert was based on an idea he had for a novel, and the seven sentences are brimming with intrigue and possibilities. Though he never got around to writing his book (and in his testimony he ruefully points out that the ad will probably be the most famous thing he ever writes), the words inspired plenty of others.

In 2012 the advert was used as the premise of Safety Not Guaranteed, a film in which three journalists discover it in the classifieds and decide to investigate its veracity. Team leader Jeff (Jake Johnson) is more interested in hooking up with an old girlfriend, while intern Arnau (Karan Soni) just wants to diversify his resume. But diffident and cynical Darius (Audrey Plaza, channelling her role as April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation) finds herself oddly charmed by the man they find on the other end of the post office box.

Kenneth (Mark Duplass) is an intense and self-important guy who seems convinced he’s cracked the secret to time travel – and is being watched by government agents. But as he puts Darius through a rigorous training period to prepare her for what’s ahead, she and her cohorts begin to wonder what’s really going on.

Kenneth: quiet genius or just a crazy person?

Of course, the underlying question is whether or not Kenneth is for real. Has he really built a time machine? And what does he plan on using it for?

Perhaps I’m stretching the boundaries here of what constitutes a science-fiction film, as Safety Not Guaranteed focuses just as much on the lives and relationships of the characters as it does on the subject of time-travel. But it raises questions that only the science-fiction genre can handle, exploring themes of regret and lost opportunities, and second chances that are given a surprising twist in the film’s final moments.

It’s quirky and uplifting without becoming saccharine – and it’s certainly a film that’s going to linger in your mind for a while after watching it.
.

Next Time: The Company of Wolves

A film based on a book of short stories sounds like an odd proposition; after all – how can you create a linear narrative from a set of unrelated tales? But The Company of Wolves is an experimental film that plays around with the stories found in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Tower, crafting an intriguing assortment of vignettes and framing devices that are all based upon the dark fairy tales of old.
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About The Reviewer:

Rebecca Fisher is a graduate of the University of Canterbury with a Masters degree in English Literature, mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. She is a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com, a large website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com and her They’re All Fictional blog.

To read Rebecca’s detailed introduction of both herself and the series, as well as preceding reviews, click on:

Big Worlds On Small Screens

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Stop Press: Congratulations, Rebecca!

Rebecca has been shortlisted for the Sir Julius Vogel Award 2015 for Best Fan Writing — in part for her regular Big Worlds On Small Screens contribution here, but also for her reviews on FantasyLiterature.com, Amazon, and They’re All Fictional — all linked to in her bio immediately above.

I’m thrilled to see Rebecca’s considerable contribution to SFF fan writing getting some well-deserved recognition.

The stars, Natasha

Natasha, fundamentals are strong,
key indicators steady.
Leave your books, Natasha,
let your computer
draw patterns on its screen.

Walk with me through the heavens.
Along cold orbits
the spendthrift stars
squander their assets on light.
The World Bank

is unamused; the IMF
is noting down their names.
So take my hand
let’s drift away
into the cosmic background.

©Tim Jones

First published in Boat People (HeadworX) 2002

Reprinted in Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand (Interactive Press) 2009

Reproduced here with permission.

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Currently, I’m refocusing on the poetry of Tim Jones, a fellow Tuesday Poet and friend in both poetry and speculative fiction prose. As I also share Tim’s enthusiasm for both science and science fiction it is perhaps not surprising that I enjoy this poem.

I featured it first on October 22, 2012.

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About The Poet:

Tim Jones is a New Zealand poet, author and editor who was awarded both the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature and a Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2010. His latest book, co-edited with PS Cottier, is The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry (2014).

For more, see http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here.

It’s seems like a very long time ago indeed, June 30 2014 in fact, that I was able to share the initial editorial feedback on the manuscript for Daughter Of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three, with words like “tremendous” and “terrific” being bandied about—which was very heartening for me after what had felt like a very long slog.

At the end of last year, I confirmed that the edit stage was also “done and dusted”. In a  subsequent post, titled “The Journey Of (Considerably More Than) A Thousand Words”, I also shared something of the nature of the journey to book completion.

At that stage, I hoped the book would get to readers in the Northern Hemisphere Fall / Southern Hemisphere spring 2015, but the publication date has been confirmed as January 2016.

No one is more conscious than I that this date will be almost four years from the publication of The Gathering Of The Lost. I can only apologise for my part in what I know, as a keen reader myself, is a very long wait. I really, really wish it could be sooner for readers, but when a book has taken a long time to write, you lose your place in the production schedule and so must wait until a suitable slot comes up. 🙁

However, my understanding is that the date is ‘firm’ and so should not change again—unless of course, readers clamour so loudly that it is brought forward. But I suspect that would take a very high level of clamouring indeed.

And trying hard to look on the bright side, I am hopeful that the January 2016 publication date may mean the gap between Daughter Of Blood and The Wall Of Night Book Four is a whole lot shorter. All digits crossed that the Muses may prove kind on that score.

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Meanwhile, for some ‘sneak previews’ on Daughter, if you haven’t already seen the following, you may like to check them out:

A Synopsis For “Daughter Of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three”

Another Sneak Preview For “Daughter Of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three”

Another Wee Snippet From Daughter Of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three