My heart is a fish, dipped in fish sauce

One of the best literary discoveries I made this year was Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy, of which the first volume, Ancillary Justice, was the first book I read in 2015, after it had won nearly every award in science fiction for 2014. Ancillary Sword I read sometime midyear, and the third volume Ancillary Mercy, was just published this fall.

Ancillary Mercy was a spectacular finale to the series. Breq has sooort of the same goal that she had in Ancillary Justice — to shoot Anaander Mianaai with a Presger gun, against dreadful odds — but things have gotten bigger and more complicated since then, not like it wasn't complicated to start with. Formerly more of a lone wolf, Breq is a Fleet Captain now, with a crew and a ship dependent upon her, and she's deeply enmeshed in the unstable petty politics of Athoek Station, where her ship is docked. Other complications include the arrival of Presger Translator Zeiat (we're pretty sure she's Zeiat because Presger Translator Dlique is dead, so she can't be Dlique) and an unregistered human living in the slums of Athoek Station who might be an ancillary to an ancient, long-lost ship from before Anaander Mianaai took over the Radch, apparently still hiding in its ghost system on the other side of the gate.

One theme that had been running constantly through the books that's really pushed to its limits in this one is the idea of who counts as real people. The Radch have a very self-absorbed notion of "civilization," where to be "civilized" is to be Radch, and therefore anyone who's not Radch can be murdered with impunity as lowly savages up until they become Radchaai — at which point they are entitled to all the benefits of the Radchaai state, on the condition they follow its rules and leave any other sort of identity completely behind them. This doesn't always pan out in practice, of course. The Presger — the powerful, ineffable aliens that are the only creatures the Radchaai are really afraid of — have a similar delineation between Significant Beings and insignificant ones, with Significance being enforced by strict treaties. The Radchaai have managed to get humans a treaty designating them Significant; AIs such as ships, stations, and ancillaries are still considered tools rather than independent, civilized, or Significant races by anybody — except, perhaps, themselves. And Breq has been doing a pretty convincing human impression for several hundred pages now. If the trilogy weren't so long, it would make an excellent, excellent addition to the Aliens and Others in Science Fiction course I took at Clark, which I will freely admit shaped a lot of my thinking on what "literary" work (discussion of what "literary" means to be had at another time) speculative fiction does. Stories that look closely at the relationships between artificial intelligence and humanity have always been my favorite type of science fiction anyway; I like cyborgs better than aliens.

I also like tea, although not as much as the Radchaai like tea, but all the same I very much enjoy the role of tea in these books, and they make me want to own more fancy tea paraphernalia. Fancy tea sets are frequently used as status symbols, and status is extremely important in Radchaai society. One especially fancy tea service becomes quite integral to the plot after it is tragically shattered by a spoiled brat near the end of Ancillary Sword, as it provides important clues to one of the many knotty political mysteries Breq is trying to untangle.

This series has been targeted by assorted reactionary types for being too political, as if any halfway decently written political drama isn't going to be freaking political, or indeed, any decently written story at all. And it is true that the villains and heroes in this work are not determined by whether they are wearing white hats or black hats, but by their actual actions and beliefs. There are some plotlines featuring actions taken and beliefs expressed that do relate to certain hot topics in modern civilization, such as Lieutenant Seivarden's slow, painful journey toward becoming less of a classist assbag, and Anaander Mianaai's questionable views on how to handle peaceful citizen protest. Personally I think these are handled stellarly — they're certainly relevant to modern issues, but they are very much a part of the world of the Radch — after all, while the world of the Radch seems strange initially, people are people and we kind of do the same basic sorts of stupid shit in a lot of our societies — and they are integral and organic parts of the story Leckie is telling. And honestly, it's these sort of little human details — people being whiny and emotional and status-conscious and petty and materialistic and flipping their shit about tea — that fills out these sorts of big epic space dramas with their talking ships and nearly-magical weapons and farcically incomprehensible aliens and makes them feel real and rich and relevant.

I think this is never more relevant than with the Presger, who are so completely and terrifyingly outside of human norms that the Presger Translators they send (who seem to be . . . constructed, somehow, like they were grown and programmed in a lab) generally come off as farcical — in addition to their being some confusion over which one is Translator Dlique and which one is Translator Zeiat, Translator Zeiat's favorite drink is fish sauce, no matter how many times the humans try to explain that fish sauce is a condiment — which, occasionally, makes it tempting to forget that they are actually terrifying. All their weirdness makes total sense somehow, to them, and they're the ones with the sufficiently-advanced-so-as-to-be-indistinguishable-from-magic guns. It's creepy as hell. But it is also still hilarious.

Actually, much of the book is hilarious; it might be a bit much if it weren't. But for a spaceship, Breq is pretty witty in a deadpan sort of way.

I'm a bit sad that there will be no more of this series, although I think it did wrap up in a very satisfying way. Perhaps I should go back and read it again rather than pining for more; I'm sure there's some things I missed the first time around.

In which an entire book is about chasing a pig through a forest

In the latest edition of Failing At Book Clubs, one of the books clubs I'm in read the entirety of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series, which all in all is probably about the length of one regular adult novel. Despite being given plenty of lead time, I managed to only read the first book, The Book of Three, and then missed the actual book club because I was sick.

I remember the Chronicles of Prydain very fondly from my childhood but I think I hadn't quite realized how long ago in my childhood I read them since I was very surprised at how quickly things moved along when I started reading. I guess I haven't actually read them since my reading level surpassed a 5th grader's, nor have I read much in the way of other books at quite that level. Middle grade is about as young as I go these days, except for the Victorian classics.

Anyway, the book was still cute and adventuresome for all that, and had that early-medieval British Isles thing going on that I like so much. I'd forgotten that it takes place in basically Wales, not England. I really need to learn more about Wales; it seems an interesting place with a lot of wacky history.

A review that is mostly an excuse to brag about presents I got

During the earlier days of the Cough That Never Ends (the cold I've had for three weeks now), in fits and spurts I managed to read How to Make Tea: The Science Behind the Leaf by Brian R. Keating and Kim Long. Ironically, during this period I was only drinking herbal/medicinal teas, which are technically not tea since they are not made from the tea plant, but are tisanes. C'est la vie.

I'd gotten the book as a birthday gift from my lovely roommate Angela. Our house drinks a LOT of tea. We drink a lot of tea and read a lot of books. It's a good house this year.

While the title of the book makes it sound like an instruction manual, only the last third or so is actually instructions on making tea. It fills up a third of the book because there are different types of tea that require different methods. The first parts of the book are about the history of tea, and explaining what the different types of tea are and how they are made, and what kinds of tea are grown in different parts of the world and how they differ from each other, and a bunch of other interesting tidbits like that. There was a lot of stuff I didn't know since I am not actually much of a tea connoisseur; I just consume a lot of it, but most of what I consume is pretty cheap. I learned about flowering tea, which I had never heard of before and which is served in glass teapots so you can see the flowers unfurl as it steeps. Coincidentally, my other lovely roommate, Meghan, got me a glass teapot with some flowering tea balls for Christmas. I have not tried it out yet, since mostly I have just been sucking down mass quantities of Throat Coat and peppermint bagged tea, for reasons. But I am looking forward to being able to use it and appreciate it properly!

The book also has a section on chemistry, some of which goes slightly over my head, but apparently SCIENCE says you should put the milk in first. VINDICATED. The section on the "basic necessities" of tea has a less basic definition of "basic" than I do, since my "basic" tea-making involves a kettle, a mug, a teabag, tap water, milk, and sugar. Stuff like tea balls, loose-leaf tea, and teapots are for when I'm feeling fancy (and I hope to feel fancy SOON since in addition to the glass teapot I also got a gorgeous red Le Creuset infuser pot for Christmas) (THAT'S RIGHT BITCHES I GOT TWO TEAPOTS FOR CHRISTMAS. GO ME). This book recommends things like a tea scale and a timer and filtered water and a pH scale and a thermometer and NO. Tea is supposed to be relaxing. I would fuss too much with all that stuff. I can barely remember to take the teabag out sometimes. Hell, sometimes I forget to actually drink the stupid stuff after I've made it. Clearly my tea game is super weak.

Anyway, it is a delightful book and while it may contain way more information than I will actually use, it is good to have it! I learned stuff, and I like learning stuff.