Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie  has received several awards and great acclaim since its release in October 2013. Having won the Nebula Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award and tied for the BSFA award, the Sword & Laser Podcast were pretty glowing in their praise of the novel when I first heard of it from on their show. It was then a pleasant surprise that iTunes was offering the book for $1.99 and made it really easy to pick up a copy and I am glad I did.

Ancillary Justice is the first book in the Imperial Radch trilogy. The book opens with the main character Breq coming across a body in the snow on some planet on the fringe of the galaxy. It turns out Breq knows the person (who turns out only to be injured) and decides to help Seivarden even though it may compromise Breq's mission. From there we are taken on a journey that jumps from Breq's present to the past where we are given insight into the Radch empire by following the story of Lieutenant  Awn and her troops during the annexation (occupation) of a planet 19 years ago.

Through the story in the past we learn of the ship Justice of Toren and the empire's use of ancillaries as part of their military. Ancillaries being the humans from conquered planets that have been put into cryogenic storage until thawed and connected to the ship's AI when they become a "segment" of the ship's ancillary groups with no part of their original personality remaining. The whole practice is both intriguing and repulsive at the same time given that these people, rather than being killed during an occupation by the empire are instead essentially killed and used as host bodies for the ship's AI.

What Ann Leckie does well in this story is give us the viewpoint of the ancillaries and help the reader have some understanding of what it might be like to think and be 20 people at once (or more). Through this viewpoint, Ann Leckie also raises questions of what it means to have free will and what makes a person unique. Overall, Ancillary Justice is a political thriller and quest novel rolled into one with a unique setting and great world building. Luckily there are two more books coming since we only get to scratch the surface of the setting.

One aspect of the book that will be a little jarring is the lack of gender specificity in the characters. The empire doesn't distinguish between men and women and thus the reader can be left guessing the gender of the characters we meet. The interesting thing is that ultimately it doesn't matter to the story. Well done. Ancillary Justice is good science fiction space opera-y stuff and gets 4 Mick Happies. Probably the best compliment I can give it is that it has made me focus my reading on Sci-Fi books as I don't want to leave the vastness of space that was introduced in the story (so now I am reading more Honor Harrington books by David Weber to pass the time until Ancillary Sword is released in October).