Book #7 Ancillary Sword
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Radch book 2)
Breq is sent to a remote planet to keep the peace. She accepts the assignment because it happens to be the planet where Awn's sister lives.
This time, there is no mystery up front about what Breq is, and not even about what she's trying to do, but the political situation on the planet soon takes over the plot, despite any plans Breq might have made.
I found the plot interesting. It gives a little more insight into how the Radch way of life works, and its devastating effects on the conquered cultures. (The first book already makes that point very well, but it's still interesting to read about it in more detail.)
The way Breq's attention is split for most of the book is also fun to read. It's no comparison to the flashbacks in the first book, but that's exactly the point.
The main attraction of this book, again, lies in Breq's unusual world view. She is an exceedingly unreliable narrator, and it's just great to be following her around. This time, the misgendering is even more aggressive than in the first book. All the characters and their family relations are always described as female. Now you know she's doing it, there is little point in guessing. And this time, the author makes absolutely sure never to tell us anyone's gender *at all*.
I found it just as unsettling as in the first book, but in a different way. In the first book, you're always kept guessing, because you don't know what Breq is doing, and why. In this book, that's all cleared up, and I found the consistent female gendering freeing in a way. It's less that you're guessing, really, and more that you're completely free to choose, because you can't be wrong.
* The only gendering exception is Queter's 16-year-old sibling. Breq specifically switches to a male pronoun when she has to talk in their Delsig language. But as soon as she's back in Radchaai, back to female it is.
* The whole "I can never be what I was again" plotline wasn't really that much to my taste. I already mentioned above that reading about her attention being split all the time was fun, but it's all overlaid with that sadness that she can never do it again the way she used to. I don't know, something about that was missing for me. It's a perpetually sad status quo. Maybe there is no solution, but I'd have thought some development would have been nice?
* The climax in the station gardens was amazing. It all came to a head in that one scene, and I thought that was extremely well written.
* Totally shipping Breq with Seivarden. Yes, she has no sex drive, but his pining was palpable. I would not be averse to them becoming canon anyway.
* The book very much reads like a middle volume. You can tell the author's setting up plot points for the finale of the trilogy, and you can tell that Breq is starting to develop connections to the people on her ship, but it's all... necessarily open-ended. It's not bad, per se, just noticeable.
4 stars. Not on the level of the first book, but still very cool.
1 - 5 stars - Brothers In Arms [DW]
2 - 3 stars - Rose Point [DW]
3 - 2 stars - Back to Sodom and Gomorrah [DW]
4 - 4 stars - First Among Sequels [DW]
5 - 5 stars - Ready Player One [DW]
6 - 3 stars - Treasure Island [DW]
7 - 4 stars - Ancillary Sword [DW]
x-posted from dw (comments:
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