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Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie...
Is pretty wonderful. Leckie takes a lot of the writing ideas that made Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword so exciting and she polishes them off so that they work better. For example, the slow-motion space battle writing that made the end of Justice such a tedious pleasure is revisited in the middle part of Mercy, but dramatically more effectively. By moving the battle scene to the middle, it raises the stakes- less has been resolved, more is uncertain, so the slow motion is tenser, and also more action-packed, as Leckie is able to prolong the wait with interesting, emotional scenes of interplay among the officers and crew of Mercy of Kalr.
Thinking about robots and artificial intelligences and their place in human society is my favorite, and a lot of the questions that Ancillary Mercy asks in its ending- about whether AIs can keep claiming ancillaries, about the participation of humans in an AI society, about what autonomy means to robots programmed with specific pseudobiological imperatives- are absolutely fascinating on their own terms as philosophical questions, but what makes them exceptional is that Leckie grounds these questions in a beautifully specific cultural context- the Imperial Radch, similar to Imperial America in some ways, similar to Imperial Rome in others, similar to other Earth cultures in other ways, and different from all of those cultures in significant ways. The question of how Celar and her cohort will share power with Station is not the same question it would be in our present America, because of different communal norms about government, power, and so on. I love that Leckie provides a satisfying ending that is only satisfying because of how much she has revealed about the Radch in the previous three books.
The Presger and Translator Zeiat reminded me a lot of the translators from China Mieville's excellent Embassytown. Leckie's depiction of the terrifying situation of encountering people so different from you and so powerfully overmatching you that a misunderstanding could spell the death of your whole nation is subtly underplayed to great effect- Zeiat is comic, but never unserious, and Leckie has you constantly straining through the fish sauce to find the significance (and ultimately the Significance). She drops Zeiat's arrival at the end of a chapter and you go "Holy shit, things just got serious, time for consequences from the murder of Dlique." And then you meet Zeiat and you pretty instantly forget about the murder of Dlique because Zeiat seems to dismiss it. But the trick she's pulling is that it's a mistake to forget it. Zeiat hasn't forgotten about the murder, Zeiat just doesn't process that information the same way a human would. Man, the worldbuilding is so cool everywhere in this book.
I loved the super fanficcy Ship/Seivarden/Breq threesome stuff so much. Robots as intermediaries for human sex and humans as intermediaries for robot sex is a thing for me, c.f. my Pacific Rim thoughts. Dude, Ancillaryverse AU where Breq used to be a Jaeger AI and now is copiloting the Jaeger Mercy of Kalr with Seivarden? Y/Y? AU where Stacker is the captain of a Sword?
Seivarden is such a failboat and I loved that there were consequences in this book for Seivarden's screwups in book one, that Seivarden's kef addiction came back to haunt her because she'd only come up with workarounds rather than dealing with the root problems, and how even though it hurt her, Breq stuck more or less to her commitment not to make Seivarden's addiction into Breq's problem. In general I thought it was fascinating that the language Leckie used for all of the Seivarden/Ekalu stuff in Ancillary Mercy was transparently the contemporary vocabulary of social justice. Doing so let Leckie come up against the limits of that kind of vocabulary, how Seivarden was capable of reciting a textbook I'm-sorry-for-saying-something-classist apology upon being coached, but it was Seivarden's own heartfelt apology later in the book, even though it contained further classist insults, that actually meant something. Leckie sketches out a path to a world where caring about other people is what drives us to create a meaningfully just society, which seems far more utopian to me than a lot of more explicitly utopian fiction.
And the 'cousin' relationship with Sphene (and Station!!!), and the pain and genius of being Tisarwat, and Mercy of Kalr speaking through Seivarden and speaking through Kalr Five and just so many great characters and great moments and an ending that feels conclusive without being conclusory!!!
One other thing I wanted to mention: Bodiedness vs. disembodiedness is a major motif throughout the series, one which Leckie largely develops by ignoring, since Breq's relationship to her body is so confused and rife with mixed meanings, and because Breq's tendency is not to mention a lot of (what I would call) important stuff about her body. For example, Breq rarely talks about her sort of autonomic singing, so the only times we learn that she's doing it are when other people comment on it and Breq reports those comments to the reader. A lot of the thematic development of this idea bubbles to the surface in the third book, between Breq being forced to confront her bodiedness by the loss of her leg and the stuff about how if she were still an ancillary, her body would have been destroyed... and also the stuff about her body being the face of the persecutor of saints, and keeping mementos of that persecution. I really enjoyed the covert physicality of the book and how it spoke to our body as an important part of our identity- in a lot of ways, it's the part of our identity we have least control over, and it's the part of our identity we most overtly present to others, which is perhaps a central reason why identity is so fraught (and why I like playing on the Internet so much). And Tisarwat changing her eye color, and Ship speaking through Seivarden (do I keep mentioning it? I liked it a lot!), and the question of people volunteering to be ancillaries!!! So much cool identity play embedded in the body play Leckie engages in.
This entry was originally posted at http://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/176042.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.
Is pretty wonderful. Leckie takes a lot of the writing ideas that made Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword so exciting and she polishes them off so that they work better. For example, the slow-motion space battle writing that made the end of Justice such a tedious pleasure is revisited in the middle part of Mercy, but dramatically more effectively. By moving the battle scene to the middle, it raises the stakes- less has been resolved, more is uncertain, so the slow motion is tenser, and also more action-packed, as Leckie is able to prolong the wait with interesting, emotional scenes of interplay among the officers and crew of Mercy of Kalr.
Thinking about robots and artificial intelligences and their place in human society is my favorite, and a lot of the questions that Ancillary Mercy asks in its ending- about whether AIs can keep claiming ancillaries, about the participation of humans in an AI society, about what autonomy means to robots programmed with specific pseudobiological imperatives- are absolutely fascinating on their own terms as philosophical questions, but what makes them exceptional is that Leckie grounds these questions in a beautifully specific cultural context- the Imperial Radch, similar to Imperial America in some ways, similar to Imperial Rome in others, similar to other Earth cultures in other ways, and different from all of those cultures in significant ways. The question of how Celar and her cohort will share power with Station is not the same question it would be in our present America, because of different communal norms about government, power, and so on. I love that Leckie provides a satisfying ending that is only satisfying because of how much she has revealed about the Radch in the previous three books.
The Presger and Translator Zeiat reminded me a lot of the translators from China Mieville's excellent Embassytown. Leckie's depiction of the terrifying situation of encountering people so different from you and so powerfully overmatching you that a misunderstanding could spell the death of your whole nation is subtly underplayed to great effect- Zeiat is comic, but never unserious, and Leckie has you constantly straining through the fish sauce to find the significance (and ultimately the Significance). She drops Zeiat's arrival at the end of a chapter and you go "Holy shit, things just got serious, time for consequences from the murder of Dlique." And then you meet Zeiat and you pretty instantly forget about the murder of Dlique because Zeiat seems to dismiss it. But the trick she's pulling is that it's a mistake to forget it. Zeiat hasn't forgotten about the murder, Zeiat just doesn't process that information the same way a human would. Man, the worldbuilding is so cool everywhere in this book.
I loved the super fanficcy Ship/Seivarden/Breq threesome stuff so much. Robots as intermediaries for human sex and humans as intermediaries for robot sex is a thing for me, c.f. my Pacific Rim thoughts. Dude, Ancillaryverse AU where Breq used to be a Jaeger AI and now is copiloting the Jaeger Mercy of Kalr with Seivarden? Y/Y? AU where Stacker is the captain of a Sword?
Seivarden is such a failboat and I loved that there were consequences in this book for Seivarden's screwups in book one, that Seivarden's kef addiction came back to haunt her because she'd only come up with workarounds rather than dealing with the root problems, and how even though it hurt her, Breq stuck more or less to her commitment not to make Seivarden's addiction into Breq's problem. In general I thought it was fascinating that the language Leckie used for all of the Seivarden/Ekalu stuff in Ancillary Mercy was transparently the contemporary vocabulary of social justice. Doing so let Leckie come up against the limits of that kind of vocabulary, how Seivarden was capable of reciting a textbook I'm-sorry-for-saying-something-classist apology upon being coached, but it was Seivarden's own heartfelt apology later in the book, even though it contained further classist insults, that actually meant something. Leckie sketches out a path to a world where caring about other people is what drives us to create a meaningfully just society, which seems far more utopian to me than a lot of more explicitly utopian fiction.
And the 'cousin' relationship with Sphene (and Station!!!), and the pain and genius of being Tisarwat, and Mercy of Kalr speaking through Seivarden and speaking through Kalr Five and just so many great characters and great moments and an ending that feels conclusive without being conclusory!!!
One other thing I wanted to mention: Bodiedness vs. disembodiedness is a major motif throughout the series, one which Leckie largely develops by ignoring, since Breq's relationship to her body is so confused and rife with mixed meanings, and because Breq's tendency is not to mention a lot of (what I would call) important stuff about her body. For example, Breq rarely talks about her sort of autonomic singing, so the only times we learn that she's doing it are when other people comment on it and Breq reports those comments to the reader. A lot of the thematic development of this idea bubbles to the surface in the third book, between Breq being forced to confront her bodiedness by the loss of her leg and the stuff about how if she were still an ancillary, her body would have been destroyed... and also the stuff about her body being the face of the persecutor of saints, and keeping mementos of that persecution. I really enjoyed the covert physicality of the book and how it spoke to our body as an important part of our identity- in a lot of ways, it's the part of our identity we have least control over, and it's the part of our identity we most overtly present to others, which is perhaps a central reason why identity is so fraught (and why I like playing on the Internet so much). And Tisarwat changing her eye color, and Ship speaking through Seivarden (do I keep mentioning it? I liked it a lot!), and the question of people volunteering to be ancillaries!!! So much cool identity play embedded in the body play Leckie engages in.
This entry was originally posted at http://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/176042.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.