Roundtable: Ancillary Justice
Words by A. M. Bueman
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice is a story that works on many levels.
Not a war story . . .
Unlike much of the space opera genre, Ancillary Justice centres problems of language and translation, religion and faith, culture and propriety. The sociological and psychological take precedence over the economic or militaristic, both in-story and out. Ancillary Justice is a story about war told in translation, persuasion, diplomacy, and intrigue.
However, Ancillary Justice is not a war story, despite its armed ships, violent annexations and military conquest. For all the violence of the Radch, Leckie—or perhaps Breq—leaves the bloody work of it unsaid. Violence occurs in the cracks between sentences; we see only its buildup and aftermath. This is paradoxically horrifying. You fill in the blanks, put together the pieces. It also avoids the gratuity and exploitation that so often dogs portrayals of colonial violence.
But Lieutenant Awn said, loud and harsh, “Fire!” and I did. Within three seconds all of the Tanmind were dead.
A massacre occurs in between sentences. And the aftermath? “the vast silence that surrounded us, once the echoes of gunfire had died down”, “the bodies”, “the temple empty of anyone but myself and eighty-three silent, staring corpses” (124).
Notably, the annexation itself takes place before the past narrative begins, and the true horror becomes the slow revelation of the scale of the violence that took place. One Esk says of the house Awn lives in, “it had once housed a large extended family and a boat rental” (15). One Esk never divulges what happened to the family, and, like so many other crimes, it fades into invisibility.
Even the destruction of Garsedd, the genocide of an entire system, is merely hinted at. The aftermath, more than a thousand years later, is a handful of relics:
. . . a few five-sided tiles in colors still flower-bright after a thousand years. A shallow bowl inscribed around its gilt edge in a language Strigan couldn’t possibly have read. A flat plastic rectangle I knew was a voice recorder. At a touch it produced laughter, voices speaking in that same dead language.
What little remains highlights what is missing, and this description is one of the most affecting in the entire novel.
However, for all this is a story about war, conquest, imperialism, colonialism, violence – this is not a war story.
. . . but a love story
As a guest on another Roundtable episode, covering The Traitor Baru Cormorant, I remarked on my appreciation of speculative worlds that refuse to be simple. In a lot of grimdark or gritty works, ‘realism’ is taken to mean a lack of morality; there are no good people, only bad people and the morally dubious. Works like Ancillary Justice give me voice to explain my dissatisfaction: this is naive. In the darkest parts of human history, in fascist dicatorships and genocides and the old horror of slavery, there have always been people trying to do good. The trans-Atlantic slave trade did not exist without the Underground Railroad; the Holocaust did not take place without Anne Frank, and the people who hid her and hundreds, thousands like her. Any work of art that pretends otherwise is a fiction. Not everyone does the right thing, maybe not even most people. But some do. Whether or not there are enough of them to make a difference, they will try all the same.
All throughout the horror and violence of the Radch, rationality is trumped by kindness. Anaander Mianaai’s plan on Shis’urna comes undone because an Orsian trusted Lieutenant Awn to do the right thing. A stupidly persistent, stubborn sail-pod pilot, lingering near the shuttle because it thought the people inside might be in distress—despite being told by both Mianaai and Breq herself to leave—ultimately saves Breq’s life.
Even as Leckie immerses us in the authoritarian Radch—“As a visiting noncitizen your legal rights are restricted . . . your right to appeal any judgement or assignment is limited. (263-264)—she never allows us to fully lose sight of the world beyond. Even at the gates of the Imperial Radch, polities like the Gerentate stand in quiet resistance, refusing to cooperate, and allowing anyone to claim Gerentate citizenship.
. . . despite fairly friendly—or at least, not openly antagonistic—relations between the Gerentate and the Radch, as a matter of policy the Gerentate didn’t supply any information at all about its residents—not to the Radch. If the Radch asked—and they wouldn’t—the Gerentate would neither confirm nor deny that I was one of its citizens. Had I been departing from the Gerentate for Radchaai space I would have been warned repeatedly that I travelled at my own risk and would receive no assistance if I found myself in difficulties.
Ancillary Justice is a love story. In the heart of Breq’s omissions, in her inexplicable actions, is love. This is not a story of strategies and armies, weapons and riches and soldiers. This is a love story, and a tragedy. Amid all the delicious details—the four Emanations, the word Radchaai meaning both citizen and civilized, the stunning use of first-person plural perspective, the horror and wonder of the ancillaries, and the central driving mechanism of networked and distributed minds—what keeps me coming back to this story is the single, devastating climax. Justice of Toren kills Lieutenant Awn, only to turn and kill Anaander Mianaai in rage and grief.
“Lieutenant Awn was dead and she had said, I should have died rather than obey you. And then One Var swung the gun up and shot Anaander Mianaai point blank in the face.”
Ancillary Justice is this moment: where all the strategy, all the political intrigue, all the cold calculations and plans fall away.
When I first read Ancillary Justice, I fell in love with the scene of One Esk Nineteen’s connection, where the horror of possession and blurring of identity, the horror of ancillaries themselves, falls into place. The inhumanity of Breq’s blunt, dispassionate narration, and the surging awe and horror it denies couples beautifully with the warmth of Lieutenant Awn’s arms, holding Breq for what would probably be the last time. Ancillary Justice is a love story, and in particular it is the story of the ones who refuse—who stand up to do the right thing despite everything. There are so very few of them.
Sometimes all they seem to do is die.
Sometimes nothing they do changes anything. But they tried. And maybe, just maybe, in a hundred or a thousand years someone will stand up and say, enough. And this time, the world will change.
I could write for days about the power of the climactic confrontation with Lieutenant Awn, where Justice of Toren disagrees with itself, where it warns its captain, where it asks One Esk to be restrained, and where it obeys orders when it should have mattered most, only to disobey a second later anyway. How the last thing Lieutenant Awn knew of Justice of Toren is that it shot her, and how One Esk never told her, never got to tell her anything different. How obeying the order to fire ceased to matter the moment it fired at Anaander Mianaai, but it would never have disobeyed if Lieutenant Awn hadn’t died first.
Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen | Ghaiad Breq
The Unreliable Narrator
The first and most important thing to understand about reading Ancillary Justice is that Breq is not a reliable narrator. Although the novel is ostensibly written in first person, Breq herself often fades into the background of scenes, and behaves more as an invisible observer—an effect only intensified in the past narrative, where the plurality of Justice of Toren or One Esk allows Leckie to ‘cut’ between ‘shots’, conversations, and scenes without leaving the single perspective. As a result, Breq often speaks with a narratorial voice imbued all the authority of the third-person omniscient narrator.
This is misleading. As we come to find out, there is a great deal that Breq is not telling us, including almost everything to do with herself. Her motivations, her desires, and her expressions are conspicuously absent from much of the novel.
In the conversations between Lieutenant Awn, Jen Shinnan, and Skaaiat Awer, One Esk constantly interjects with explanations or corrections, which she largely keeps to herself: “Actually, there were rules . . .” (55) or “Actually, the fertilizer had been a by-product . . .” (55-56) or “That wasn’t quite true, but this was not time to point that out.” (56). While this kind of fact-checking may seem fitting for an omniscient narrator, the fact that One Esk’s narration constantly diminishes and contradicts Jen Shinnan, often in ways sympathetic to the Orsians, reveals a great deal about One Esk’s own opinions and beliefs.
As an ancillary, Breq decides her expressions and her tone of voice, enabling her to conceal her reactions. This happens frequently. It is only belatedly, sometimes on a re-read, that I notice the omission. Even beyond the fact that Breq’s control is not nearly as complete as she leads us to believe (“I was certain my face was without expression, but when my eyes met hers she flinched” (196)), the very act of choosing her expression is often a way of concealing her real emotional reaction—which Breq almost never discloses.
“Certainly,” I agreed. “You’re the expert.” “Oh no!” [Strigan] exclaimed, sitting straighter. “I’ve made you angry.” I was sure I hadn’t changed my expression.
Frequently, the reader can only guess at Breq’s emotional state from the context.
. . . Some dingy little Mercy, with a shabby, provincial captain.” “Your face is almost perfectly impassive,” Strigan said to me. Not in Radchaai, so Seivarden didn’t understand. “But I can see your temperature and heart rate.”
So often we only learn about Breq’s expressions or actions secondhand, as other characters reveal the omissions and biases in her narrative. While Breq stood in Strigan’s house, her narration was filled with recounting her journey, and explaining what Strigan’s absence would mean for her quest (38-39). Only later, when Strigan recounts her perspective of the same events, do we discover Breq had been weeping (78). The factual narration conceals the emotional reaction.
In one exchange between One Esk and a Seven Issa soldier, the segment smiles suddenly, and Breq explains how the sudden change in expression can be disturbing—and then, sudden and surprising, the soldier replies “All right, then, you don’t want to talk about it.” (88). This sudden insight recontextualises Breq’s action as her trying to change the subject—a motivation Breq never tells us.
This is most evident in Breq’s singing; with few exceptions, we are only made aware that One Esk is singing (or silent) when other characters bring it to our attention. Then, towards the end of the book, we discover that she is singing or humming “almost constantly” (332).
When preparing for the podcast, one of my fellow podcasters asked whether I found Breq a ‘cold’ or ‘distant’ narrator. For my part, there is so much emotion buried beneath the surface of Ancillary Justice. Breq (or One Esk, or Justice of Toren) doesn’t display emotional reactions even (or perhaps especially) in the most confronting or dramatic scenes in the book.
Lieutenant Awn lay on the floor of the Var decade room, face-down again, dead. The floor under her would need repair, and cleaning.
The transition from the corpse of a friend to the cleaning bill might seem callous, but rather than belying a true lack of emotion, it is the overt denial of an emotional reaction too powerful to address calmly. Plastering routine or petty concerns over extreme emotions is our narrator’s favourite emotional management skill. And indeed, Justice of Toren soon betrays the strength of its feelings, albeit in its reported actions (shooting Anaander Mianaai) rather than its internal monologue.
Lieutenant Awn
There is a ghost in Ancillary Justice, haunting Breq’s actions and expressions, invisibly influencing her every decision—and this ghost is, of course, Lieutenant Awn. While much is said of Lieutenant Awn in the text of Ancillary Justice, far more is said in the subtext. In fact, much of the aforementioned unreliability (particularly in reporting emotions) very likely extends to Lieutenant Awn.
Jen Shinnan lived in the upper city, and before the annexation she had been the wealthiest person in Ors, in influence second only to the head priest of Ikkt. Lieutenant Awn disliked her.
The first sentence details Jen Shinnan’s impressive accolades and her pre-eminent position in the city; the second, blunt sentence is Awn’s poor opinion. Which of these things does Breq value more? What does Breq think about Jen Shinnan? This kind of juxtaposition without explanation leaves the connection (and contradiction) to implication only. In this instance, it demonstrates the extent to which Breq values Lieutenant Awn’s opinion—and presents it in place of her own.
Why were these two sentences placed next to each other? What does this infer about Breq’s opinions or mental state? One Esk frequently displaces their own reactions onto Lieutenant Awn in place of claiming them as their own opinions.
“Seriously. I have a theory.” Lieutenant Awn, who had been exposed to several Tanmind theories about the Orsians, managed a neutral, even almost curious expression and said, blandly, “Oh?”
In the scene where One Esk’s communications are disrupted, the prose soars with complexities, the core concept of ancillaries and distributed consciousness truly shining—and we see just how much One Esk cares about Awn. From every segment individually trying to check on Awn, to chanting ‘Language, Lieutenant!’ in chorus, the true scale of One Esk’s obsession with Awn becomes suddenly and comically clear. It begs the question: how much of One Esk’s attention is on Awn at any one time, normally?
Of course, Ancillary Justice takes place after Awn’s death, a moment and an act which sit at the heart of the narrative in more ways than one, but which Breq is seemingly unable to confront. Justice of Toren’s murder of Lieutenant Awn is the inciting incident of the present-day narrative, the motivation for her quest for vengeance. The entire past narrative builds up to this point, just as the present narrative looks back to it. Whether out of denial, self-deception, or simple inability to face what she has done, Breq (or her narration) avoids identifying it as such, or examining her own grief and guilt.
Immediately after Awn dies, Toren describes her as “shot by One Var (or, to speak with less self-deception, by me)” (247), while an isolated segment says outright “The Lord of the Radch shot Lieutenant Awn!” (249). When Justice of Toren shatters the second and final time, One Esk Nineteen—later Breq—thinks first of Lieutenant Awn. Forgets, even, that she is dead.
For the smallest fragment of a second I smelled humid air and lake water, thought, Where’s Lieutenant Awn?
The first direct admission of guilt comes at the end of the chapter: “I had shot Lieutenant Awn. Nothing would ever be right again.” (254), and it is this truth which Breq shies away from before and after this point. As with other elements of Breq’s unreliability, we learn about this secondhand.
“Somethings bothering you,” Seivarden observed . . . “You always hum that tune when you’re preoccupied.” My heart is a fish, hiding in the water grass. I had been thinking about all the ways things could go wrong . . . And I had been thinking about Lieutenant Awn.
This exchange connects this song with Lieutenant Awn—and, as mentioned earlier, Breq is humming or singing ‘almost constantly’, but almost never references it in her narration. How often is Breq humming this song, in particular?
Where Justice of Toren says, “It was betrayal, to Lieutenant Awn, I saw it plainly. But she must have known I had no other choice.” (245), the attempts at reasoning sound almost plaintive. Surely she would understand. Surely she knew that I didn’t want to. Surely she knew that I cared. The entire story of Ancillary Justice, and Breq’s character, revolve around this single, terrible action, that she can never take back.
I couldn’t help thinking I should have let Seivarden fall. Shouldn’t have jumped. Falling, I still didn’t know why I had done it. But at the moment of choice I had found I couldn’t walk away.
Breq doesn’t know why she saves Seivarden—but I do. Seivarden is not Lieutenant Awn, and never will be, but in the twenty years since the destruction of Justice of Toren Breq has not managed to move on from the awful truth of what she has done. Every decision she makes now is shadowed by that one, terrible act. When she had Lieutenant Awn’s life in her hands, she chose wrong. Breq’s efforts to save Seivarden (including throwing herself off a cliff) are what she wished she had done for Awn, twenty years too late. Could this be an aspect of denial, some irrational belief that if she makes the right choice this time, she can undo or erase her terrible decision, save Lieutenant Awn? Or has the loss of Lieutenant Awn simply made it impossible for Breq to consider failing anyone else?
Worldbuilding
Culture and Cosmology
Leckie built the Radch in her mind before she wrote the series. Much of the worldbuilding details are never explicitly explained, and give the world a verisimilitude and a sense of depth that renders it endlessly rich and rewarding to read.
The inclusion of cosmology in Leckie’s worldbuilding is particularly well-done. Leckie nails the balance of an iconography and creation story that feels familiarly religious, but distinctly alien. The Radchaai absorb annexed gods and cosmologies into their own pantheon, drawing parallels and equivalencies between Amaat and the Tanmind concept of the Black in order to subsume the foreign god—a practice that, as Leckie explains in an interview included in Ancillary Radch, was done by the Roman Empire. Everything from the special emphasis on coincidence to the use of the four Emanations as decade names adds to the sense of the Radch as a real, layered culture. This is particularly evident in the hierarchical undertones to Radchaai culture: they leave glass flowers for the dead as a display of piety and of wealth (295), and wear pins on their jackets to highlight their loved ones and their social standing and connections.
Things happen the way they happen because the world is the way it is. Or, as a Radchaai would say, the universe is the shape of the gods. Amaat conceived of light, and conceiving of light also necessarily conceived of not-light, and light and darkness sprang forth. . . . The smallest, most seemingly insignificant event is part of an intricate whole and to understand why one particular mote of dust falls on a particular path, and lands in one particular location, is to understand the will of Amaat.
The space-dwelling nations of Shis-urna divided the universe into three parts. In the middle lay the natural environment of humans—space stations, ships, constructed habitats. Outside those was the Black—heaven the home of God and everything holy. And within the gravity well of the planet Shis’urna itself—or for that matter any planet—lay the Underworld, the land of the dead from which humanity had had to escape in order to become fully free of its demonic influence.
In the Radch and beyond, culture and religion are central to the narrative in a way that becomes particularly meaningful in the context of the colonialism and genocide practiced by the Radchaai. Leckie consistently highlights cultural differences in everything from parenting styles to musical tastes, emphasising the sheer diversity of cultures; whether on non-Radch planets like Nilt or recently annexed planets like Shis’urna or Valskaay, Leckie refuses to generalise entire worlds into a homogenous planet. Perhaps most importantly, this cultural diversity is shown largely without judgement; even when contrasting different ideals for parenthood, Leckie (or perhaps Breq) challenges the idea that one is better than the other.
A Radchaai parent would have put her arms around her daughter, kissed her, told her how relieved she was her daughter was well, maybe even would have wept. Some Radchaai would have thought this parent cold and affectionless. But I was sure that would have been a mistake. They sat down together on the bench, sides touching, as the girl gave her report, what she knew of the patient’s condition, and what had happened out in the snow with the herd, and the ice devil. When she had finished, her mother patted her twice on the knee, briskly, and it was as though she were suddenly a different girl, taller, stronger, now she had, it seemed, not only her mother’s strong, comforting presence, but her approval.
Language and Linguistics
There are crucial linguistic details and differences concealed behind the English text. One of the Nilter languages indicates gender on nouns like ‘indigent’ and second-person pronouns like ‘you’, and makes distinctions between mixed-gender and single-gender groups—much like the Romantic languages (i.e., French), and much unlike real-world English. Radchaai is different again (making no reference to gender whatsoever), as is the Orsian language (which indicates age or kinship in addition to gender).
I knew she was female, and a grandparent, both of which had to be acknowledged if I were to speak to her not only grammatically but also courteously.
Even within the Radchaai language, Leckie gives an emphasis on elocution—amidst a broader commentary on imperialism and provinciality—which I find both realistic and effective. There is an aristocratic accent or way of speaking which some Radchaai (respected families, great houses, Anaander Mianaai) possess naturally, and others (provincial, recently annexed) strive towards. For instance, Seivarden Vendaai speaks in “antique, effortlessly elegant Radchaai” (264), and Skaaiat Awer with “vowels effortlessly broad and refined” (53), but Awn Elming—the daughter of a cook—has to speak “slowly and precisely, careful of her accent” (13).
“How beautifully you speak, Captain Seivarden,” said someone else. “So many young people these days are careless about their speech. It’s lovely to hear someone speak with real refinement.”
This is a detail well-founded in history, particularly the British empire; for much of the 20th century, Australian schools taught English elocution to Australian children, teaching them to suppress their natural way of speaking. The language of the public discourse in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s (see Damousi) is eerily similar to that in Ancillary Justice. In the grand scheme of things, including the historic (and very much ongoing) linguistic genocide of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the plight of accent discrimination against white Australians is small, but still a relevant comparison. In this area, Leckie reveals the harms of imperialism and colonialism not just on its direct victims, but on the citizens, particularly the provincial and lower-class citizens.
Ancillary Justice is a book of subtexts—some linguistic, some cultural, many both. Similarly to Naomi Novik’s Temeraire, where the sociocultural expectations of 19th-century British high society add Austenesque layers of subtext to every conversation, in Ancillary Justice the alien norms of Radchaai propriety leave the reader constantly sensing a cultural depth they cannot see. Bound by the pressures of propriety, the characters themselves undergo a kind of subterfuge with every sentence, saying one thing, not saying another, and frequently meaning something else entirely.
She didn’t like Jen Shinnan, and though of course it was never even hinted at, very likely Jen Shinnan didn’t like Lieutenant Awn much either. This sort of invitation was only extended out of social necessity
Another aspect of Leckie’s astute use of language is sociolinguistics. What One Esk describes as “the Orsian tendency to approach topics by stealth” (47) is a sociolinguistic feature, a difference in conversational style between the Orsians and One Esk’s native Radchaai. These kinds of differences are even legible in English; where the phrase ‘as you say’ reads like agreement, in the Orsian style (as One Esk informs us) this is actually a refusal to agree (see 50).
“Bad dreams,” said Strigan. “Anxiety. Shaking, sometimes.” “Unsteady,” I said. Translated it had very little sting, but in Radchaai, for an officer like Seivarden, it said more. Weak, fearful, inadequate to the demands of her position. Fragile. If Seivarden was unsteady, she had never really deserved her assignment, never really been suited to the military, let alone to captain a ship.
Leckie even includes a cultural idiom of distress—culturally-specific language used to describe mental illness.
There is the word ‘Radchaai’, a powerful linguistic idea that collapses racist and colonialist discourses. There is much nuance and commentary packed into this one word—so much so that there are multiple chapters dedicated to it in David M. Higgins’ critical companion to Ancillary Justice.
“What’s the difference,” Lieutenant Awn said, so quietly it didn’t seem like a break in the silence, “between citizens and noncitizens?” “One is civilized,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat with a laugh, “and the other isn’t.” The joke only made sense in Radchaai—citizen and civilized are the same word. To be Radchaai is to be civilized.
By referencing linguistic difference so frequently, Leckie emphasises the impossibility of perfect cultural or linguistic translation, destabilises the linguistic features of English as a civilisational norm, and forces the reader to recognise and look beyond the limitations of the monolingual English text.
And finally, Sex
SF as a genre is more useful than "mainstream" fiction for exploring possibilities for social change precisely because it allows idea to become flesh, abstraction to become concrete, imaginative extrapolation to become aesthetic reality. It allows the writer to create and the reader to experience and recreate a new or transformed world based on a set of assumptions different from those we usually accept. It allows the reader, for a while, to be reborn into a reborn world. And, through working out in concrete terms philosophical and political assumptions, it allows the reader to take back into her or his own life new possibilities. There is a dialectical relationship between the world and its imaginative and ideational reconstructions in the creations of the mind. The artist says for us what we almost knew and defamiliarizes what we thought we knew.
I once compared Ancillary Justice to The Left Hand of Darkness. Given the historical use of epicene he as the generic human pronoun, and the broader alignment of men with humanity, there is a tendency in both fiction and reality to see characters and women characters, humans and women. A ‘character’ is male by default; ‘human’ is separate to ‘woman’. Where the masculine is the default, the feminine is made both invisible and hypervisible. Women are more gendered than men are; ‘woman’ and ‘she’ are more gendered than ‘man’ and ‘he’.
The idea of femininity/womanhood/she as the default is inherently radical. Rendering male characters invisible is radical, in particular because it reveals how epicene ‘he’ renders women invisible.
Ancillary Justice does something interesting to ‘she’. With an entire novel of she/her characters, Leckie crosses past the little moment of surprise one might feel whenever a text uses the epicene she only occasionally, and begins to normalise the usage. As the book progresses, Leckie reclaims ‘she’ from femininity.
In Ancillary Justice, the use of epicene she for everyone
- speaks back to historical usage
- troubles assumptions of gender neutrality as masculinity
- actually works to de-gender ‘she’, stripping away the gendered subtext that marks ‘she’ as worthy of special attention.
It’s a linguistic tour de force.
Notably, unlike in The Left Hand of Darkness, the Radch is an entirely cultural androgyny. There is no biological explanation. The genderless Radch is a social construction alone—and this places it within reach. We cannot distance ourselves from Radchaai the way we can distance ourselves from the androgyne Gethenians.
And far beyond the linguistic implications of epicene she, and the sociocultural genderlessness, Leckie has created a queer world in which it is impossible to be queer. There are no lesbians in the Radch and no gay men – because there are no men and no women, only people. It is impossible to be trans, because there is no gender to move away from (or to move towards). A world without gender is also a world without queer genders and sexualities. The Radch reveals gayness and transness to be results of the division of sexes. There’s an excellent quote about this.
The homosexual/heterosexual distinction depends upon socially meaningful gender categories, on being able to ‘see’ two men or two women as ‘the same’ and a man and a woman as ‘different’
And yet, the Radch is unmistakably and powerfully queer. Yes, queer Radchaai are invisible, unmarked – and unremarkable. I found myself, in reading, trying to guess which Radchaai were which gender. Is Lieutenant Awn is a woman, and Skaaiat a man—or both women, or both men? I wanted to fit their relationship into the cultural norms I was familiar with, to decide how to feel about it.
I realised only very belatedly that Breq being female (the Nilters call her a ‘little girl’ in their gendered language) and Seivarden being male makes their relationship heterosexual. Even beyond Breq bossing Seivarden around, however, both of them being Radchaai—the same gender as each other—means they stand on an equal societal (and personal) footing (on gender, anyway) in a way that is impossible for heterosexual couples in our world. Many fans refer to Sievarden with she (and Seivarden/Breq as a lesbian relationship), while reviewers and academics alternate between using ‘she/her’ for Seivarden, and ‘he/him’. Which is appropriate?
Conclusions
Ancillary Justice is not perfect. Leckie stumbles sometimes on the Big Reveals, particularly of Breq’s ancillary identity. Seivarden’s slow revalation while Anaander Mianaai (having already guessed Breq’s identity) berates her and Breq for their deception is a delightful scene of miscommunication. The later reveals—to Skaaiat, to Denz Ay—land without much impact.
Ancillary Justice, as the first book in the trilogy, has to do the heavy lifting of establishing the world. I do however understand why some people dislike this aspect of the book. In the later books of this trilogy, there is far less pausing to explain context.
While there is much unsaid, there is plenty that is said—plenty of political or philosophical statements made plainly, about action and inaction and whether thoughts matter at all, about resistance, about bravery. Some readers might find this preachy, but I found it scathing and powerful.
These criticisms do not diminish the detailed worldbuilding, the rich linguistic texture of the novel, or the fascinating interplay of subtexts and unreliability in the narration:
“They confiscated my entire harvest.” This was the cousin of Jen Shinnan’s, the owner of several tamarind orchards not far from the upper city. She tapped her plate emphatically with her utensil. “The entire harvest.” The center of the table was laden with trays and bowls filled with eggs, fish (not from the marshy lake, but from the sea beyond), spiced chicken, bread, braised vegetables, and half a dozen relishes of various types. “Didn’t they pay you, citizen?” asked Lieutenant Awn . . . “Well, but I certainly would have gotten more if I could have taken it to Kould Ves and sold it myself!” There had been a time when a property owner like her would have been shot early on, so someone’s client could take over her plantation. Indeed, not a few Shis’urnans had died in the initial stages of the annexation simply because they were in the way, and in the way could mean any number of things.
First: the immediate juxtaposition of the cousins’ complaint with the reality of the bountiful table, a fare which far outshines the Orsian food (and Awn’s own rations) we have been shown thus far.
Second: the battling narratives of the annexation, confusing and recasting the ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ of this particular story. It’s easy enough to believe the Radchaai would confiscate goods, but when it turns out the Tanmind are exaggerating the losses it becomes clear that this is more greed than righteous indignation, but then One Esk reveals the Radchaai could have (and, a few hundred years ago, would have) treated the cousins far worse than even their initial complaint, reasserting the wildly unequal power dynamic and lingering threat of violence between Radchaai and recently-annexed citizens . . . something which is very much present in this conversation. Are the Tanmind aware of this, or is this something they have forgotten?
Third: the fact that One Esk follows Shinnan’s remark with an anecdote about shooting property owners—reflecting a violent urge in One Esk itself, perhaps?
There is so much to analyse, and I have only scratched the surface.