Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie - The androgynous empire of the Raadchai

I just finished reading the multi-award-winning sci-fi "Ancillary Justice" by Anne Leckie. First off, this is not a book for the faint-of-heart sci-fi fan, nor the alcoholic reader. It requires a lot of focus to stay on track. Despite being a short read, length-wise, I had to go back to some sections several times to figure out exactly what was going on.

The gist of the plot is as follows (no spoilers): there's a ship, which is part of an empire, and it uses "ancillaries" to do things. The ancillaries are moving, breathing human beings, akin to avatars. They act as extended sensor apparatus for the ship, both within itself and on a planet. One of the ancillaries gets broken and thus begins the story.

There are two parallel paths of mind-fuckery that occur within the book from the get-go.

The first path is the (almost) complete absence of gender-dependent pronouns. Every single character within the book is either "she" or "her", and I suspect Leckie just chose the feminine versions because of her own gender. For the most part of the book, Leckie doesn't reveal a character's gender. Gender is an ambiguous state of affairs in the empire that the book is set in (Raadch). The Raadchai language itself contains no gender-dependent pronouns, and Raadchai garb is androgynous. It's not that there aren't males or females, just that they all look the same.

Initially (I'll admit it, as a guy) I thought: "oh god, is this some social justice propaganda book?". But you soon get a sense of how brilliant this narrative tool is. It breaks down a lot of preconceived notions you may have about human behavior. Despite the use of the female pronoun you can't ever guess any of the characters' gender without introducing your own biases (the names, by the way, are also gender-ambiguous). Yet Leckie punctuates this with the occasional gender reveals which make you turn back pages and go "What! There is no way he/she is male/female!". As you turn back you realize there is nothing within the book itself to reveal what your own tendencies have wrought. The book truly does make you think.

The second path of mind-fuckery is the narrative viewpoint of the story. The ship tells the story in the first person. Except that the ship consists not only of itself but several thousand ancillaries. So the story is also told from the point of view of a select few ancillaries along with the ship.

At the same time.

Without breaks.

You see where I'm going with this?

There is a point in the first escalation of the plot where the viewpoint changes across characters without changing personal pronouns. The independent ancillaries are doing independent things at independent locations, but to maintain the point of view of the ship, Leckie slides seamlessly from one ancillary to the next. At this point I had to turn back pages several times to work out "what the fuck is going on?". You do end up following and understanding the story but, as I said earlier, it requires a fair bit of focus.

This book is well worth the awards it has received. Despite the brain-twisting that occurs, it is easy to follow the story. There are times when Leckie references backstories and imperial history without more detail. This got a little confusing, but the confusion doesn't impact the main story too much. There is also an interesting interview at the end of the book with the author, which is worth reading.

This is the first book in the Imperial Raadch series and Leckie plans to release a trilogy. I am looking forward to the second book and it would be interesting to see what novel method she uses in the next one.

Book link: Ancillary Justice on Amazon