How to use this Page

It's been a little quiet on this blog over the summer, mainly because I've been busy with various projects for other venues (for example the Clarke shortlist review).  But also, because I've been busy reading.  A lot.  2016 is shaping up to be one of--if not the--most prolific reading years of my life.  Quality-wise, it's also been very rewarding, and though my other writing prevented me from

Add a Comment

Hello, readers! Once again, we’ve brought out the Upcoming Titles feature. This month we’re focusing a bit on spooky reads as October is HALLOWEEN MONTH! (Or at least that’s what all the stores tell us.) As always, this is by no means a comprehensive list of forthcoming releases, just a compilation of titles we think our readers (and our contributors!) would enjoy.

Without further ado:

October 6th

• Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds novella compilation) by Alexandra Bracken**
• Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
• The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
• Happy! by Pharrell Williams
• The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan
• Against a Brightening Sky by Jaime Lee Moyer
• Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
• The White Rose by Amy Ewing
• We’ll Never Be Apart by Emiko Jean
• A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis
• A Thousand Nights by E. K. Johnston

October 13th

• The Rose Society by Marie Lu**
• First & Then by Emma Mills

October 20th

• Illuminae by Amie Kaufman** and Jay Kristoff
• Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith¹

October 27th

• Our Lady of the Ice by Cassandra Rose Clarke
• What We Left Behind by Robin Talley

** Distinguished PubCrawl alumni

Add a Comment

I loved Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie so much I was a little worried that I might be disappointed by Ancillary Sword. I began reading, holding back just a little, expecting disappointment and not wanting to invest too much but before I knew it I was in deep and happy as a clam. When I turned the last page I didn’t want it to be done. More please! There will be more. In October Ancillary Mercy will be published. I fear that will be the conclusion to the story and I will be bereft.

Ancillary Sword picks up right where Ancillary Justice left off. Breq, who is an ancillary and used to be a ship called Justice of Toren, has been given the command of Mercy of Kalr. She was given the command by the Lord of the Radch herself. Mercy of Kalr no longer has an ancillary crew, though the previous ship’s captain required all her crew to behave as if they were ancillaries. An ancillary is basically a human who has been implanted with all kinds of equipment and forced to become part of the ship’s AI. The ancillaries are soldiers but also the eyes and ears and mobile bodies controlled by the ship.

Breq in the singular is rather lonely. She could become an ancillary of Mercy of Kalr but she would then no longer be Breq. Because Breq used to be an ancillary she can communicate with Mercy of Kalr in a very different way than a human captain would be able to. All of the humans on the ships have implants that gives the ship access to their eyes and ears as well as their body’s functioning (heart rate, blood pressure, etc). The job of the ship AI is to take care of her humans. Because Breq is an ancillary, the ship can actually show her what the crew is doing through their eyes and ears. It is a small comfort to the lonely Breq.

Mercy of Kalr is sent to guard Athoek Station. On this station is the sister of the lieutenant Breq loved when she was Justice of Toren. So there is an interesting plotline there. We also have Lieutenant Tisarwat who is brand new and only seventeen, assigned to the ship by the Lord of the Radch. But Breq figures out pretty fast the Tisarwat is actually an ancillary of the Lord of the Radch and the ancillary bits are not working out so well in that body. There is also another ship, Sword of Atagaris which does still have ancillaries. The Radch empire is falling apart and there is a question about whose side Sword of Atagaris and her captain is on.

Toss into all this the continuing questions of identity that began in the first book. But add in another question — what is justice and what does it mean?

‘What is justice Citizen? […] We speak of it as though it is a simple thing, a matter of acting properly, as though it’s nothing more than an afternoon tea and the question only of who takes the last pastry. So simple. Assign guilt to the guilty.

Of course it is never simple and perfect justice can never be truly dispensed.

The writing is great. The pacing excellent. Since Breq can see and hear through the eyes of her crew (they have no idea she can do this) the perspective is constantly changing but is never confusing. It works really well for keeping all the balls in the air and all of the plotlines moving ahead together at the same time, there is no “meanwhile back at the ranch” kind of thing. Leckie does a good job of giving depth to even minor characters. And it’s just an all around great romping story. Ancillary Justice won a Hugo and a Nebula. Ancillary Sword is currently up for a Nebula. I can hardly wait for Ancillary Mercy!

Filed under: Books, Reviews, SciFi/Fantasy Tagged: Ann Leckie, Imperial Radch Series

Add a Comment

It’s been so long since I’ve read a right and proper, complex, deliciously well-written space opera that when I finished Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie I broke my no new library requests until the end of February ban and put myself on the list for the next book, Ancillary Sword. I’m number 4 so I hope I don’t have to wait so very long. I already mentioned how the book plays with gender. It stopped being so weird after awhile to have everyone be “she” and slipped right into the background.

What’s the book actually about? It’s a complex story with lots of interlocking pieces. Breq, our narrator, used to be a troop carrier, a ship called Justice of Toren. Breq, or rather One Esk segment nineteen, is an ancillary or Justice of Toren, a human body connected to the AI of the ship. The troops Justice of Toren carries are all ancillaries of herself. They are all connected and can see and hear what is going on through each segment and Justice of Toren controls them all. The Ship has consciousness and her human crew, the captain of the ship and various lieutenants in charge of the brigades of ancillaries have implants that allow them and Justice of Toren to communicate directly to each other. The humans think the ship is just a computer but they are mistaken. Ships have favorites, and Justice of Toren’s favorite is Lieutenant Awn. Got all that?

So the first half or so of the book moves back and forth between present and twenty years ago. Twenty years ago Breq/One Esk was with Lieutenant Awn on the planet of Shis’urna, a planet that the Radch, an ever expanding empire, had annexed. They had been on the planet for five years, making nice with the new citizens and helping them adjust to being part of the Radch empire. Everything was going pretty well until it wasn’t. It turns out there is a pot afoot involving the ruler of the Radch empire, Anaander Mianaai who herself is made up of no one knows how many ancillaries. I’m pretty sure the original Anaander was human but she has lived on for thousands of years through her numerous ancillaries, expanding her empire and growing ever more powerful.

In the present, Justice of Toren was destroyed and Breq is all that is left of the ship. She is on a mission, out to take revenge against the one who destroyed her. People from the past keep showing up and she has to work hard to hide who she really is or else her plans will all be ruined. She is pretty sure she will end up dead when all is said and done. Does she get her revenge in the end? Yes and no. Does she die? She comes pretty darn close. And instead of the end she thought it all would be, it turns out to be only the beginning. I said this was a space opera right?

So great plot. Great pacing. Lots of cool stuff. But the best part is that is not all of the book. Because the book is also about empire and politics and class and war, about following orders (or not) and taking responsibility for your actions. And most of all, it is about identity. Breq is Breq and One Esk segment nineteen and Justice of Toren. She is not human but is often more human than the humans. She struggles with being lonely since until twenty years ago she has never been an “I” and never been alone. She discovers that while she is now singular, she is not actually alone. Breq also often battles with and is hindered by emotions. She makes choices she doesn’t fully understand. She is a spark about to ignite the dry tinder that the Radch Empire has become.

Filed under: Books, Reviews, SciFi/Fantasy Tagged: Ann Leckie, Imperial Radch Series

Add a Comment

I’m in the middle of reading Ann Leckie’s fantastic book Ancillary Justice. One of the things I like about it so much is that it plays with our gender expectations. The story takes place in a fictional universe in which the Radch regularly annex planets to their empire. The language spoken by the Radch has no gender, it does not recognize male or female anything. This presents a conundrum for Leckie since English requires gender designations. How do you translate? Leckie has decided to make the default pronoun “she” serve for everyone.

The story is told from the point of view of Breq who used to be a starship. She knows many different languages but she is Radch and as such always has trouble figuring out gender when speaking a language that requires it.

What is super-duper fascinating is to read everything through the “she” pronoun. I picture all the characters as women and there is nothing in any of the characters’ actions that give away what their biology might be. Nor does anyone get described as curvy or beautiful or brawny or any of the other myriad ways gender and biology get marked. Everyone is just people who happen to be referred to as “she” when a pronoun is required. But, as I said, I keep picturing all the characters as women because that is what “she” asks me to do in English.

So you might be able to imagine then how disconcerted I was while reading last night to discover an important character is actually a biological male. He was only referred to as “he” once in a conversation Breq was having with someone in a gendered language and then it is right back to “she” again. My brain went all wobbly trying to replace a she with a he but it didn’t last long. The further I got away from “he” and the more “she’s” that got piled on in referring to this character, my mind reverted right back to picturing a woman.

The cool thing is there is no reason why all the characters couldn’t actually be women. In the context of this world, there is no question about whether a woman can lead an army or captain a starship or beat the crap out of someone or rule the empire or do anything else. Gender is not recognized and when there are no gender boxes to fill it is amazing what kinds of other things can be focused on instead.

Reading a book in which “she” stands in for the universal gender points out how fallacious English is to insist that “he” can be used as a universal pronoun meaning men and women. It can’t and it doesn’t and I never believed that it did. Whenever I’m reading and come across a “universal he” I am always brought up short. I have to stop and take the time to mentally insert myself into the equation because “he” is not me. I wonder, any men reading this, when you come across “universal he” do you think, oh that means men and women? When you see “he” standing in for everyone do you picture everyone as being male? And if you are a male who has read Ancillary Justice, what was your experience reading a book where everyone is “she”?

I can’t begin to say what a pleasure it is to read a book like Ancillary Justice. It’s no surprise Leckie won the Nebula and the Hugo for it. I can’t wait to find out how it ends and I am greatly looking forward to reading the second book, Ancillary Sword.

Filed under: Books, In Progress, SciFi/Fantasy Tagged: Ann Leckie

Add a Comment

Ancillary Justice
Ann Leckie
science fiction

I am a closet-case sci-fi fan. Or, as multiple book reviews on this blog have probably revealed, maybe not so closet case. I looked forward to reading Ancillary Justice when I'd seen it won the Hugo and Nebula awards. I cut my sci-fi teeth on the likes of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and Frank Herbert's Dune in between installments of Little House on the Prairie. That is the seventies in a nutshell. And I figured, if Leckie could beat Andy Weir's The Martian, which I love, in the awards category, I was about to fall in love again.

Let's just say Ancillary Justice and I got off to a rocky start. It was not love at first sight. In fact, the novel frustrated me  (incidentally, it was the same when I first met my husband).

Basic plot - a space ship decides to take revenge on the leader of the culture that made - and ultimately attempts to destroy - it (Ancillary Justice, not my marriage; it's still happily intact).

It's fascinating stuff. AI taken to a whole new level. However, the AI can't decipher female from male and so refers to everyone as "she". Sometimes, gender is specified, but then the ship reverts to calling said characters "she". For me, it made connecting with characters really hard. And that made me wonder, why does gender matters in story? Or rather, does gender matter in story? Should it matter? What does Leckie gain by making her story more or less gender neutral?

I haven't finished figuring all of this out, but I have come to the conclusion that for the story, by making everyone gender neutral, characters become sentient beings. That's it. They have flaws and quirks, but in remaining gender neutral, they never became much deeper than that. This may, in part, have to do with the boundaries of my hermeneutics. I live in a world in which, for the most part, the gender of any person I interact with, is clear. With that comes mounds of unspoken data.  Without that, I have to rethink my world. That is what Leckie forced me, as a reader, to do in her novel. I had to see it through a different lens, a new lens, one I haven't completely finished sanding down yet, and won't, without further interaction.

The absence of gender imploded my hermeneutic structure of interpretation. It made me feel uneasy. And it's kept me feeling uneasy. And thinking. In other words, it's genius.

For more great reads, visit Barrie Summy's website. She's got a bushelful!

Add a Comment