Book Review: Ancillary Sword by Anne Leckie.
Goodreads rating: ***** (five stars).
Read: 06/04/2017 – 10/04/2017.
I couldn’t get enough of Ann Leckie’s world from Ancillary Justice so I picked up its sequel. And I was not let down.
Warning: Could contain spoilers for the previous book – Ancillary Justice.
Synopsis: Following immediately from the events of Ancillary Justice, Breq – now captaining Mercy Kalr and its crew, travels to Athoek Station. She so desperately wants to set right her wrongs by apologizing to Lieutenant Awn’s little sister. But, Atheok station – long since annexed and its population brought to civilization is not as tranquil as it seems.
Following the very determined and goal orientated Breq of the previous book, Ancillary Sword is more character driven. Moved less so by Breq’s need for revenge but by her remorseful need to bring equity to Athoek. Intertwined with this is her personal objective of removing the Lord of the Radch’s influence.
This book gives us a more in depth look into the characters – Breq and Seivarden. And introduces us thoroughly to the crew manning Mercy of Kalr. It also opens up avenues for the AI taking on more leading roles later on in the book.
As its predecessor – Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword continues the pattern of referring to everyone with female pronouns (as is culturally appropriate in Radch Space). This provides interesting thoughts with speculation on the outward appearances and/or genders of the characters. Whilst few are explicitly said to be one or the other, most (including Breq) are never addressed. Personally, I really enjoyed this. I was given the freedom to speculate and gender characters as I saw fit without the commitment of being correct. To me, it’s a new concept explored in a book and, I think, takes away the distraction of gender conforming or non-conforming characters. They didn’t have to break through sexist barriers for me, the reader, to get to know them.
Like I said at the beginning of this review, this book is character driven. From a negative vantage point one could say this book has no relevant plot. Merely, things to be done that come up in sequence to one another. I understand some people don’t find this interesting, and some even hate it. I think the reason why I loved this book so much was simply because I loved the world and the characters in it rather than its original plot line. So, I could ‘stomach’ the ongoing inactivity in terms of big plot changes.
The book is interspersed with moments of tension and action in the form of accidents or ‘unseen-up-until-the-moment-of’ conflict. In relevance to the plot these could be seen as annoying by those who actually want more plot in this series. But, if you enjoy the characters and seeing Breq change Athoek for the better – these moments are immensely likeable.
Loved it so much, I picked up the third and final book – Ancillary Mercy, immediately.
