Ancillary Justice

I admit it, I am a bit of a "reverse book snob." I love to read books of, shall we say, "Questionable literary value." The more awards a book has one, the more hesitant I am to read it. Let's just say admitting you have a problem is the first step, and that I am dealing with it. So when I saw that my library had both Ancillary Justice and its sequel Ancillary Sword, I decided to give it a try. I was not encouraged by the words of my favorite Librarian, who said that it had been requested by another patron and they had not enjoyed it at all, and neither had the assistant librarian who works in one of the other branches. But I have signed up for the Worldswithoutend.com 12 award winning books in 12 month challenge and since Ancillary Justice had won just about every award it could and several of my on-line friends had given it good reviews, I figured I might as well bite the bullet and get it out of the way.

I am so glad I did. The hype for this book I feel is quite justifiable. That said here is my caveat. This is not a "space opera" as I define it. People looking for a literary version of "Star Wars" is going to be sadly disappointed. This is a political thriller set in space. To carry the Star Wars metaphor a bit further, this book is not "The Empire Strikes Back", but is instead "Phantom Menace" (Without Jar Jar) but with extended trade and senate scenes.

I like the political thriller aspects of this novel. And unlike some critics, I got over the gender neutral language by imaging every character as female the same as the main character. I did not have any problem with the novel after that and actually enjoyed the main character Breq's troubles trying to souse out the gender of the people "she" encounters. It added a bit of humor to what could have been a rather bleak novel otherwise. What I did have trouble with was the concept of the AI and the ancillaries. I was more than half way through the book before I really was able to wrap my head around one central brain, and thousands of bodies. I was asleep and all of a sudden I sat straight up in bed with the term "hive mind" in my head. After that I totally understood what the author was trying to go for (I Think.)

Ann Leckie's second book entitled Ancillary Sword has already been released and has so far been nominated or won four awards. Surprise, surprise I have not read it as of the writing of this review but I am going to. It is currently nominated for the 2015 Hugo award and if it is anything like the first novel I really hope it wins because I could not think of a better "F-U" to the "Sad Puppies" and "Rabid Puppies" voting bloc, so Go Ancillary Sword!

4.5 of 5 stars