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"Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie - a NaNoMo book that eventually made it into print and won a slew of science-fiction awards (Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, British Science Fiction Association Award). I picked up a second-hand copy, leafed through and decided it warranted a proper read: this is seriously hard SF, set in the deep future in an alien culture and narrated from the point of view of a starship's artificial intelligence in an android body, but it's also a compelling story of loyalties and revenge, as we gradually find out exactly who (or what) the narrator is, what happened to her, and what she plans to do about it.( Read more... )
This is grand-scale space opera in an incredibly detailed setting, the full depth of which is gradually revealed throughout the book. I'm not at all surprised that it won all those awards in 2013: I'm very surprised that I had never heard of it!
Also read the sequel (a third is apparently in the works), "Ancillary Sword". I didn't think this was so outstanding; with this sort of world-building fiction, the problem is that a large portion of the original novel is taken up with detailed backstory and setting description, so there is always the problem of a second story needing to be heavier on plot.
Here the author takes the choice of sending her narrator to spend the entire book in a cut-off star system where the culture is completely different from those we have seen previously, enabling her to do further world-building on a smaller scale and examine conflicts of race/class within a conquered society and the differences between 'ordinary' soldiers and the ancillaries now being phased out. Unlike in the original novel, the underlying plot isn't really resolved, making it clear that the author is now able to count on getting a sequel published: this is very much a middle book, and feels a bit of a detour.( Read more... )
I'm certainly curious to see what the author will do as a finale...
This is grand-scale space opera in an incredibly detailed setting, the full depth of which is gradually revealed throughout the book. I'm not at all surprised that it won all those awards in 2013: I'm very surprised that I had never heard of it!
Also read the sequel (a third is apparently in the works), "Ancillary Sword". I didn't think this was so outstanding; with this sort of world-building fiction, the problem is that a large portion of the original novel is taken up with detailed backstory and setting description, so there is always the problem of a second story needing to be heavier on plot.
Here the author takes the choice of sending her narrator to spend the entire book in a cut-off star system where the culture is completely different from those we have seen previously, enabling her to do further world-building on a smaller scale and examine conflicts of race/class within a conquered society and the differences between 'ordinary' soldiers and the ancillaries now being phased out. Unlike in the original novel, the underlying plot isn't really resolved, making it clear that the author is now able to count on getting a sequel published: this is very much a middle book, and feels a bit of a detour.( Read more... )
I'm certainly curious to see what the author will do as a finale...
