The Murderbot Diaries are a power fantasy about being aromantic and still developing extremely important dedicated emotionally intimate partnerships where you are a top priority in a person's life, equal to their other family or romantic attachments despite your own emotional difficulties. And having guns in your arms
We need more women characters who are Male Protagonists. You know. Slightly haggard. She's splashing cold water on her face and gripping the edge of the sink staring in the mirror for a minute. She's coping badly with her deadwife
I think if I heard I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas in the correct circumstances it could move me to tears. It's like the promise of a brighter future that never came to pass
Just finished listening to the Radiant Star audio book, and Adjoa Andoh is magnificent, as ever. She captures the Narrator's level of whimsical, fond snarkery so well. My only quibble is that I don't love her choice of robotic voice for Justice of Albis, but that's really a very, very minor downside in the grand scheme of things. (She pronounces Ooiooian as "Ooh-WHY-an. Which is certainly less tortured than my mental "ooh-ee-ooy-an.")
some nattering about pronouns below the cut.
The narrator's use of she/her pronouns for Radchaii fascinates me; in the Ancillary series, from Breq's point of view, it's meant to represent a translation choice. As Breq says in Ancillary Justice, "The Radchaai don't care much about gender." Which isn't to say that gender doesn't exist in the Radch, necessarily. But the characters we see referred to as women throughout the series are not actually people with a female gender. Or, if they are, then "female gender" in the Radch isn't really meant to be analogous to anything that we-the-readers understand.
All the books in the series, including the ones not from a Radchaai perspective, maintain this choice of feminine pronouns and gendered nouns for Radchaai. It's just kind of invisible in Provenance and Translation State because the Radch plays a relatively minor role, and we're only dealing with a small handful of normative genders from Ingray or Enae's perspective. (I do need to reread TS at some point soon.)
In Radiant Star, though, we get a veritable buffet of genders to choose from for native Ooiooians. I'm on the fence as to whether the Narrator is actually a native Ooiooian; they speak authoritatively on the subject of what Ooiooians believe and what they will find familiar, which at a minimum suggests they've spent a very, very long time among them. And the Narrator chooses, out of "he/she/sie/e/per/ve/ze/xie" to use she for all Radchaai humans. (And "they" is also notably missing from that list, when the Narrator brings up eating onions. "They" is explicitly genderless, reserved for Savants who have discarded their gender for their faith. But even Savants must have an opinion on the prevalence of onions in Ooiooian cuisine.)
Is it because "they" is so religiously loaded that the Narrator chooses "she" for Radchaai instead? Or is it because, "In Ooioiaa, as in many other places, people who were she were assumed to be authorities, the sort of people who planned and ruled and dreamed." Is the feminine pronoun convention a mark of respect? A kind of grammatical acknowledgment of the Ooiooian annexation?
I have no answers to any of these questions but my god do I enjoy chewing on them. I know that Leckie's approach to gender and pronouns has shifted a bit since Ancillary Justice, and Breq is also not the most reliable of narrators. The fact that non-Radchaai use masculine pronouns for Seivarden and Anaander Miaanai in AJ is maybe something I should take with a grain of salt; I need to double check if that convention is carried through Sword and Mercy as well, or if Anaander only gets proper-noun'd instead of pronoun'd in the third person by the Valskaayans.
Of course, if we want to get really Tolkien-y about all of this, the answer is simply that Ann Leckie has chosen this particular translation convention as a convenience to the reader across the continuum of the books that deal with events in and around the Radch empire. But that's less fun than thinking about how the non-Radchaai deal with all of the seventy thousand metric fuck tons of Radchaai bullshit that comes with dealing with anyone from the Radch.
I can listen to somebody talk about their interests like this forever. Please please tell me what realistic plants you found in your game. please tell me about all the propane tanks you saw in your game.
@coquelicoq wrote this excellent analysis of why the narrator of Radiant Star is Justice of Albis, but was unable to answer several key questions that result from that conclusion. Among them, Why is Justice of Albis itself such a non-character in the story? In a book FULL of character povs, JoA's is weirdly absent, for a significant recurring character. The analysis also asks, Why is JUSTICE OF ALBIS writing this story?, which can be adjusted to a different but related question: Why is Justice of Albis writing THIS story?
I'd argue that the answer to these is the same: Justice of Albis, the narrator, IS showing its interiority, but only by proxy: through the interiority and development of the novel's main characters, Jonr, Shtel, and Keemat. What could be more fitting for a Rachaai ship, after all, but to tell its story through ancillary experiences?
Because another question that one must ask of this novel is: Why are THESE characters the ones singled out for focus, in this story of this brief power struggle in the city of Ooioiaa? They are literally singled out: the dustjacket summary identifies, though does not name, "a religious savant will entertain visions of his own sainthood [Keemat], a socialite will discover zer comfortable life upended [Shtel], and a young man sold into servitude will find unlikely escape [Jonr]." Either the narrator wrote this to draw the reader's attention to these characters, or the real-life publishing company did.
Yet a reader who skipped that summary could be forgiven for not identifying these "main" characters until at least the back half of the novel. Jonr's pov is introduced first, page 5...then, after an exciting prologue explaining the terrible premise of his life, disappears until p63, nearly 1/5 of the way through the book. Keemat is referenced early, but doesn't appear on page with his own pov until p50 - in a chapter whose close third person pov is dominated by Hierarch Niranhin. Keemat doesn't get a chapter dedicated to their pov until p103, 28% of the way through. Shtel, likewise, is introduced with a couple sentences of pov on p37, in a chapter dominated by Serque Iono, and doesn't get hir own focus until p177 - LITERALLY HALFWAY through the novel.
Nor do of them do anything particularly significant for the plot of the story, the political power struggle, food shortages, etc. That privilege goes to Hierarch Niranhin, Governor Charak, and Serque Iono, whose povs dominate the first half of the book. Of our main characters, only Keemat will be anything more than a footnote in history books (if Jonr is even that), and that only for their dramatic self-sanctification done and writing discovered AFTER the crisis's climactic resolution.
So why are Jonr, Shtel and Keemat spotlighted, by presumed-writer Justice of Albis?
It's easy to see how the ship relates to Jonr. Like a ship AI, Jonr's very existence was commissioned for the purpose of service. He is introduced to the Radchaai, and re-introduced to the plot, as effectively an Ancillary: he was in cryostasis awaiting his assigned service; he is unfrozen by the Radchaai military, they upload things to his brain, and then he's pressed into service tending a Radchaai officer('s cousin). JoA is explicitly sympathetic to Jonr over this (or at least, scornful of the medical officers' carelessness with him). They even share the hobby of discreetly collecting things - they initially bond specifically over the fact that JoA unknowingly stole Jonr's old collection, and, with an eponymous sense of justice, does its best to return the original items or replacements.
Some circumstances also connect JoA with Shtel or Keemat. All are trapped are trapped in a social hierarchy: Keemat's with an emphasis on obedience to superiors (like the military, for a code-restricted AI), and Shtel's with a strict adherence to social class (like the lesser-humanization of AIs). But it's not comparable at all to JoA and Jonr's connection.
That's because it's not the circumstances of their lives, nor the actions they take, but rather the INTERNAL EXPERIENCES of each main character that discreetly mirror that of Justice of Albis. More than taking action, Jonr, Keemat and Shtel all experience some sort of climactic revelation - most appropriate, in a novel where so much of the world & characters centers around vision-fueled religious faith!
Jonr's comes first, the one that's most a single blinding flash, when he's invited back to his family:
That was where they lost Jonr. Because he knew, with a sure, bodily certainty, that if Radden really did believe Jonr belonged, if he really thought of Jonr as his brother, he would have brought his summoner into the kitchen to share the news, whatever it was, rather than exclude Jonr in even so small a way. (p242)
Keemat's revelation starts with a vision, which pushes them out of their sole focus on starving themself into sainthood:
Savant Keemat sat, not on their bed but on the floor of that alcove that house Sts Slelen and Criril. Before Keemat stood a young man who they had never seen before. "Please help me," said the young man. "Why won't you help me?"
That wasn't me, Keemat wanted to say. I would have helped you if I had been there. Instead they said, "Equanimity. Beneficence. Obedience. Prayerfulness. Fortitude. Patience."
"It's very simple for you," said the young man. "It's not so simple for me." (p287-288)
It is perhaps notable that this vision is explicitly of Jonr - whom Jonr's consoror had just asked Keemat to help, and also, Jonr whom Justice of Albis relates to so easily. Whom it sympathizes with after his defeezing and re-education, and feels the need to honorably return or replace what it can of his prized collection. Jonr never begs Justice of Albis help like this, and it wasn't present when he was first begging, 30 years ago, to a savant of the Radiant Star...but if JoA is the narrator, is Jonr an inspiration to it, too?
This vision prompts Keemat to visit Serque Iono's household, trying to help Jonr escape his imprisonment by his family (at the behest of Jonr's new Radchaai "consoror", who truly does care for him). There, they help Shtel reach - or at least approach - hir own revelation. Sie cannot speak it yet, but sie does feel it:
"You are doing everything you can to support him," Keemat said. "But you aren't so sure he is supporting you."
"It's my..." Shtel was angry at Savant Keemat for saying it, and angry at hirself for thinking it might be true.
[...]
"I love him, and it's my whole job as his consort to..."
"But what is his job as your consort?" asked Keemat.
"He doesn't..." Sie wanted to say that of course sie did not expect or demand anything of Iono. (p294)
Keemat's full moment of clarity follows upon their return to their lodging:
But they remembered their vision. Remembered Jonr saying, Why won't you help me? The reproach - the accusation - had been plain. And, really, was it not the job of the savants of the Temporal Location to help people? Was that not the purpose of Keemat's own visions? Had they been misled yet again as regarded the import of that vision that had led to that first, mistaken pronouncement that Serque Tais was indeed destined for sainthood? Could it be that their own subsequent conviction that in fact the Star was desired Keemat's own sainthood was also mistaken? In pursuing that sainthood, had Keemat deserved that rebuke from the Radiant Star, Why won't you help me? (p306)
(Here is another possible direct analogy: how many people, over the centuries, do you think have begged the Justice of Albin, Why won't you help me? How many people unseen in this story alone, as it carries out "peacekeeping" and "crowd control", or enforces curfews on the streets of the starving city? How many people has it given only, at best, a rote answer quoting the unquestionable scripture of Radchaai military orders?)
Keemat's revelation brings them back to Shtel...who, it turns out, has completed hir journey unseen by the reader, albeit still with the help of someone else. Sie is now able to speak it:
"I've had a very good talk with Mother Zaved," Shtel was saying. "She said that any duty we may have is secondary to our duty to the Radiant Star. She says that some people always faithfully observe their duty toward others, but forget the duties others owe toward them." Sie frowned. I don't know. I always thought that one should o anything for someone they loved. Whether or not they..." Hir voice caught, as this had been a turn of conversation with Zaved that had distressed hir. "Whether or not they loved you." (p310)
Then, Jonr gets a final, less blinding realization during his rescue, as he escapes a brief delusion...and, in a way, completes Shtel's arc by finding that he does have people who will be caring and dutiful back at him him:
Then, seeing that Jonr's consoror was beyong speech, Justice of Albis said, "We are not dead, and neither are you."
"I am, though," Jonr protested.
[...]
Something about [the consoror's] tone brought Jonr on alert. "Consoror," he said. She did not respond. "It's all right. It's all right. Everything is all right."
[...]
"We have to leave soon," said Justice of Albis, but Jonr shushed it. You just had to be patient when a consoror was like this, he knew that. And he might - no, he wasn't dead. The realization was a painful relief. He wasn't dead, and she had come for him. Even though she had warned him that she wouldn't be able to, and clearly at some cost.
This all, I propose, adds up to Justice of Albis's own internal emotional story of the Radchaai Civil War, the establishment of the Republic of Two Systems and the recognition of AIs as an independent species with full species rights under the Presgar Treaty. Those major interstellar-political events happen mostly off the page, in other books, just as JoA's internal journey is hidden from us... But we have seen other ships, most notably Justice of Toren, make similar journeys. Enough that we can see how this combined journey of Jonr, Keemat and Shtel could be that of a different Justice.
(Jonr): I will never be one of them, in their [Radchaai] eyes. They don't think I belong, only that I can belong to them. At best, to them, be of use.
(Keemat): [The pained awareness of having been asked for help and done nothing; the drive to do something to help someone]
(Shtel) They will never love me the way I love them. They will never care for me, emotionally or practically, the way I care for them.
(Keemat) I NEED to help others. No matter what anyone else (alleged superiors) say, or my own thought still based on what they said - my true purpose is to help others.
(Shtel) Just because I love them doesn't mean I owe them anything, much less everything.
(Jonr) Despite everything, I am alive. I am brought to life by the instinct to help. And I am cared for, albeit from unexpected quarters.
I'm not going to try to map these moments of revelation to Justice of Albis throughout the novel - indeed, I'm not sure they all happen during the novel, and I don't think they happen in exactly the order played out by Jonr, Shtel and Keemat. Some amount of (1) through (3) very plausibly have already happened before the novel began. Not yet (4) - that precludes a certain amount of overt action, which JoA is not taking...yet. But the time we meet JoA, it is already deprecating officers under its breath, building collections for fun, and not only discreetly withholding information about said collections (the lost Ylec Images of Radiance), when to have them would really help the Radchaai political position, but explicitly lying to officers' faces about them!
I do think (5) has a directly analogous moment, likely mixed with (4) and (6). Shtel's conversation with Zaved, which she is recounting there, happens unseen by the reader - just as JoA's journey back to Radchaai space, and its discovery of civil war and the Republic of Two Systems and its popularly declared personhood all happen unseen by the reader. We only know that when it returns, it comes as a represtative of the Republic of Two Systems, and announces all of this current events news...and it comes with all the supplies it can to help the starving city of Ooioiaaa, Radchaai interlopers included. It immediately begins distributing food to the populace. It even brings a compansion, Justice of Onri, to assist.
Thus concludes the plot of the book - in which, note, Justice of Albis itself IS the most significant character in finally solving the struggle of the political unrest and inter-related starvation. Afterward, Jon, Keemat and Shtel all get a few paragraphs of epilogue - because unlike Ancillaries, consumed entirely by their ship, they are people with their own lives. And what disparate lives they are!
Keemat was recognized forever more for their sainthood and writings - the thing they had realized was not their true purpose, though it was still their true end. The Radchaai used it for political purposes, and then the Consorority of Translocation did, but it was nonetheless a genuine inspiration to many.
Shtel had a couple final revelations: that Iono was, in fact, a shitty person, but also that he had never abandoned hir despite many many people urging him to do so; so sie didn't abandon him, and they left Ooioiaaa together. The narrator reports that this worked out for hir; he did grow to be a more supportive partner.
And Jonr, ever the closest to JoA in life experiences, eventually rode into the metaphorical sunset with Justics of Albis and his new consoror - the people who had saved him, and whom he had, through care and perhaps inspiration, helped to save.
not shipping something bc i think the characters have a cute romantic relationship and think they would actually be good together, more like i enjoy putting them in a relationship in the same way behavioral scientists enjoy putting mice in obstacle courses
ellievsbear
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
