Revisiting Breq from the Gerentate
Jul. 1st, 2024 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileOn a recent trip to Vermont I indulged myself in the purchase of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, and my girlfriend indulged me with buying the two sequels to read herself and then to promptly hand over into my possession so they could stay together and I wouldn’t blow up my books-purchasing count.
Ancillary Justice is a big fun space opera from the point of view of an AI, which is a type of science fiction that I have a big weakness for (see also: my beloved Murderbot). “Breq” used to be a big ship but is now only one human body. This reduction in stature has not stopped her from being on a mission of revenge against the many-bodied ruler of the Radch empire, Anaander Mianaai. This mission of revenge brings her to an ice planet full of (justifiably) cranky provincials where she on purpose finds a scientist with a useful antiquities collection and accidentally finds a former lieutenant of hers named Seivarden, who is herself an antiquity, as she once got stuck in a suspension pod for a thousand years and then woke up to find everyone she’s ever known dead. Seivarden didn’t handle this well and wandered off out of the Radch to do drugs for a bit before Breq scoops her up and saves her life, basically against her will. Breq pretends to be a foreign tourist until she maneuvers herself into a position to get an audience with Anaander Mianaai, or at least some of Anaander Mianaai. Breq ends up being suborned into a bunch of inter-Anaander Mianaai politics even though if she had her druthers she’d just shoot all the Anaander Mianaais on both sides of her internal conflict.
At the time this book was published it was subjected to a lot of discourse and now, with the discourse in the back mirror, I was wondering if it would hold up. I think it does. Without a bunch of discourse about people bugging out about pronoun use in the Radch… well, you get used to it after a few pages and then it’s a fun space opera about a bunch of traumatized military goons doing revenge and intrigue and hinting at the threat posed by bigger, weirder, more powerful forces than the Radch, although of course we don’t meet the Presger yet because that is what sequels are for. There is explosive space combat and fussy imperial shit about manners and tea. It’s a great time.
Ancillary Justice is a big fun space opera from the point of view of an AI, which is a type of science fiction that I have a big weakness for (see also: my beloved Murderbot). “Breq” used to be a big ship but is now only one human body. This reduction in stature has not stopped her from being on a mission of revenge against the many-bodied ruler of the Radch empire, Anaander Mianaai. This mission of revenge brings her to an ice planet full of (justifiably) cranky provincials where she on purpose finds a scientist with a useful antiquities collection and accidentally finds a former lieutenant of hers named Seivarden, who is herself an antiquity, as she once got stuck in a suspension pod for a thousand years and then woke up to find everyone she’s ever known dead. Seivarden didn’t handle this well and wandered off out of the Radch to do drugs for a bit before Breq scoops her up and saves her life, basically against her will. Breq pretends to be a foreign tourist until she maneuvers herself into a position to get an audience with Anaander Mianaai, or at least some of Anaander Mianaai. Breq ends up being suborned into a bunch of inter-Anaander Mianaai politics even though if she had her druthers she’d just shoot all the Anaander Mianaais on both sides of her internal conflict.
At the time this book was published it was subjected to a lot of discourse and now, with the discourse in the back mirror, I was wondering if it would hold up. I think it does. Without a bunch of discourse about people bugging out about pronoun use in the Radch… well, you get used to it after a few pages and then it’s a fun space opera about a bunch of traumatized military goons doing revenge and intrigue and hinting at the threat posed by bigger, weirder, more powerful forces than the Radch, although of course we don’t meet the Presger yet because that is what sequels are for. There is explosive space combat and fussy imperial shit about manners and tea. It’s a great time.