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Ancillary Justice and Sword
Dec. 2nd, 2014 11:15 pmSo I just read Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie and they were great, and aimed right at my id: intelligent space opera about a space ship AI stuck in the body of a human :D :D No time travel, alas, but she's thousands of years old and there's flashbacks to earlier times.
The plot is involving and the prose easy to read, I blew through both books in a day each. There's supposed to be a third book in the trilogy but both end on pretty satisfying notes. But I do hope the third comes out soon :)
They're not totally fluffy, there's serious themes like colonisation, rape, and grief and a fair number of unpleasant things happen, but the characters are likeable and develop satisfying relationships, by the end of each book I felt reasonably happy. I was reminded of the Culture novels, Vorkosigan novels, and *cough* the better written Homestuck fanfic about the Alternian empire. But with less makeouts and visceral violence, and not quite as satisfying as those at their best.
The narrator's culture is basically gender blind, so she calls everyone "she" and and every time she's expected to correctly guess people's gendered pronouns like it's obvious she gets gumpy. Most of the characters' genders are left ambiguous, which made for very interesting reading as I considered them as various combinations of male, female, or other.
( Some thoughts about the world building, nothing too spoilery )
The plot is involving and the prose easy to read, I blew through both books in a day each. There's supposed to be a third book in the trilogy but both end on pretty satisfying notes. But I do hope the third comes out soon :)
They're not totally fluffy, there's serious themes like colonisation, rape, and grief and a fair number of unpleasant things happen, but the characters are likeable and develop satisfying relationships, by the end of each book I felt reasonably happy. I was reminded of the Culture novels, Vorkosigan novels, and *cough* the better written Homestuck fanfic about the Alternian empire. But with less makeouts and visceral violence, and not quite as satisfying as those at their best.
The narrator's culture is basically gender blind, so she calls everyone "she" and and every time she's expected to correctly guess people's gendered pronouns like it's obvious she gets gumpy. Most of the characters' genders are left ambiguous, which made for very interesting reading as I considered them as various combinations of male, female, or other.
( Some thoughts about the world building, nothing too spoilery )
