Musings of a Hugo Voter: Ancillary Sword / Ancillary Justice
So, I'm reading my way through the Hugo packet. Since Ann Leckie's publisher saw fit to only include sample chapters, I checked this year's nominee and last year's winner out of the library. Due to the vagaries of availability, I read the sequel first.
Ancillary Sword, this year's nominee, gets an "Eh..." from me. The craftsmanship is good. She does a lot of complex world-building (in retrospect, the heavy lifting was in Justice), and paints a lot of intricate details on culture and society. You can see the scenery in your mind's eye, from the descriptions. The problem is, that you're halfway through the book before anything actually happens.
At that point, someone gets shot on a space station. The problem is, it doesn't actually advance the plot, because there isn't that much plot going. The shootee / cadaver is an emissary from an alien race, who's got a rather odd viewpoint on the universe, but doesn't materially impinge on the story. Breq, the protagonist, then has to go through some elaborate purification and mourning rituals down-planet. Cue up more fancy world-building and culture-smithing. Finally, some more stuff happens, and she relieves another ship captain for corruption. Meh. I mean, this is a book where the smashing of a 3,000 year old tea set by a spoiled brat, gets equal billing with a bomb going off.
What I'm seeing could be one of several things. Second book of a trilogy, but a worse flop-down / dull backgrounder than the Two Towers, in the Ring Trilogy. Or, Leckie just wrote a sequel because she had this universe laying around, might as well use it -- except she shot her wad on the first book (see below). This also might possibly be the second novel in a longer series. If so, it serves as an interlude in a story arc, rather than something like a standalone. If / when Ancillary Mercy (yes, the title's that predictable) comes out this year or next, I'll check it out when the library gets a copy. Meanwhile, I finally finished Sword, and the library pinged me to let me know that Ancillary Justice was in.
I can actually see how this book won the Hugo. If I'd been voting last year, I'd have voted for Larry Correia's Warbound, but Ancillary Justice is actually pretty good. The world-building / culture depiction gets sandwiched in between bits of an actual plot. In fact, there's three chronologically different subplots that twine together to create the climax. Breq, the protagonist, has her interesting points -- like she's not even human. She's the last remaining fragment of a starship AI, and she's pissed at the Lord of the Galactic Empire she belongs to. This gets interesting as the plot goes on, since said Galactic Empire, the Radch (denizens of it being Radchaai), is a bit of totalitarian nastiness along the lines of Imperial-phase Rome, or the Soviet Union.
Also, shooting the Lord of the Radch in the face doesn't do a whole lot of good, since there are thousands of her. What Breq does succeed at, however, is triggering a civil war between bits of the Lord. Fun and games, indeed. Incidentally, note that I said "Lord" and "her". Ms Leckie apparently took seriously, that UK sci-fi editorial a couple-three years ago, calling for "an end to binary gender in SFF". Radchaai, the language, has only one human pronoun, "she". There is, in both books, exactly one sentence where, if you don't miss it, Breq mentions that her sidekick in all this is male. Frankly, the non-binary-gender thing is a gimmick. Doesn't actually add much to the plot of either Justice or Sword.
In summary, if I bother to post a review to Amazon, Ancillary Justice will get 3-4 stars. Ancillary Sword, 2.
[DW Original]
Ancillary Sword, this year's nominee, gets an "Eh..." from me. The craftsmanship is good. She does a lot of complex world-building (in retrospect, the heavy lifting was in Justice), and paints a lot of intricate details on culture and society. You can see the scenery in your mind's eye, from the descriptions. The problem is, that you're halfway through the book before anything actually happens.
At that point, someone gets shot on a space station. The problem is, it doesn't actually advance the plot, because there isn't that much plot going. The shootee / cadaver is an emissary from an alien race, who's got a rather odd viewpoint on the universe, but doesn't materially impinge on the story. Breq, the protagonist, then has to go through some elaborate purification and mourning rituals down-planet. Cue up more fancy world-building and culture-smithing. Finally, some more stuff happens, and she relieves another ship captain for corruption. Meh. I mean, this is a book where the smashing of a 3,000 year old tea set by a spoiled brat, gets equal billing with a bomb going off.
What I'm seeing could be one of several things. Second book of a trilogy, but a worse flop-down / dull backgrounder than the Two Towers, in the Ring Trilogy. Or, Leckie just wrote a sequel because she had this universe laying around, might as well use it -- except she shot her wad on the first book (see below). This also might possibly be the second novel in a longer series. If so, it serves as an interlude in a story arc, rather than something like a standalone. If / when Ancillary Mercy (yes, the title's that predictable) comes out this year or next, I'll check it out when the library gets a copy. Meanwhile, I finally finished Sword, and the library pinged me to let me know that Ancillary Justice was in.
I can actually see how this book won the Hugo. If I'd been voting last year, I'd have voted for Larry Correia's Warbound, but Ancillary Justice is actually pretty good. The world-building / culture depiction gets sandwiched in between bits of an actual plot. In fact, there's three chronologically different subplots that twine together to create the climax. Breq, the protagonist, has her interesting points -- like she's not even human. She's the last remaining fragment of a starship AI, and she's pissed at the Lord of the Galactic Empire she belongs to. This gets interesting as the plot goes on, since said Galactic Empire, the Radch (denizens of it being Radchaai), is a bit of totalitarian nastiness along the lines of Imperial-phase Rome, or the Soviet Union.
Also, shooting the Lord of the Radch in the face doesn't do a whole lot of good, since there are thousands of her. What Breq does succeed at, however, is triggering a civil war between bits of the Lord. Fun and games, indeed. Incidentally, note that I said "Lord" and "her". Ms Leckie apparently took seriously, that UK sci-fi editorial a couple-three years ago, calling for "an end to binary gender in SFF". Radchaai, the language, has only one human pronoun, "she". There is, in both books, exactly one sentence where, if you don't miss it, Breq mentions that her sidekick in all this is male. Frankly, the non-binary-gender thing is a gimmick. Doesn't actually add much to the plot of either Justice or Sword.
In summary, if I bother to post a review to Amazon, Ancillary Justice will get 3-4 stars. Ancillary Sword, 2.
[DW Original]