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Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch Book 1) by [Ann Leckie]

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Ann Leckie

Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Ann Leckie (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3,037 ratings

Book 1 of 3: Ancillary world

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Ancillary Justice is Ann Leckie's stunning debut -- the only novel to ever win the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards -- about a ship's AI who becomes trapped in a human body and her quest for revenge. A must read for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and James S. A. Corey.

"There are few who write science fiction like Ann Leckie can. There are few who ever could." -- John Scalzi
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Once, she was the Justice of Toren -- a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.

Print length

393 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Orbit
Publication date

October 1, 2013
File size

1091 KB
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Books In This Series (3 Books)

Complete Series

Ancillary world

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1
Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch Book 1)
Ann Leckie

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$9.99
2
Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch Book 2)
Ann Leckie

(1,301)

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3
Ancillary Mercy (Imperial Radch Book 3)
Ann Leckie

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Unexpected, compelling and very cool. Ann Leckie nails it...I've never met a heroine like Breq before. I consider this a very good thing indeed."―John Scalzi

"Ancillary Justice is the mind-blowing space opera you've been needing...This is a novel that will thrill you like the page-turner it is, but stick with you for a long time afterward."―io9.com (included in 'This Fall's Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy Books')

"It's not every day a debut novel by an author you'd never heard of before derails your entire afternoon with its brilliance. But when my review copy of Ancillary Justice arrived, that's exactly what it did. In fact, it arrowed upward to reach a pretty high position on my list of best space opera novels ever."―Liz Bourke

"Establishes Leckie as an heir to Banks and Cherryh."―Elizabeth Bear

"A double-threaded narrative proves seductive, drawing the reader into the naive but determined protagonist's efforts to transform an unjust universe. Leckie uses...an expansionist galaxy-spinning empire [and] a protagonist on a single-minded quest for justice to transcend space-opera conventions in innovative ways. This impressive debut succeeds in making Breq a protagonist readers will invest in, and establishes Leckie as a talent to watch."―Publishers Weekly

"By turns thrilling, moving and awe-inspiring."―The Guardian

"Leckie does a very good job of setting this complex equation up... This is an altogether promising debut."―Kirkus

"Using the format of SF military adventure blended with hints of space opera, Leckie explores the expanded meaning of human nature and the uneasy balance between individuality and membership in a group identity. Leckie is a newcomer to watch as she expands on the history and future of her new and exciting universe."―Library Journal

"Leckie's debut gives casual and hardcore sci-fi fans alike a wonderful read."―RT Book Reviews

"A sharply written space opera with a richly imagined sense of detail and place, this debut novel from Ann Leckie works as both an evocative science fiction tale and an involving character study...it's also a strongly female-driven piece, tackling ideas about politics and gender in a way that's both engaging and provocative...Ancillary Justice is a gripping read that's well worth a look."―SFX (UK) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Ann Leckie has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, a lunch lady, and a recording engineer. The author of many published short stories, and former secretary of the Science Fiction Writers of America, she lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband, children, and cats.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00BAXFDLM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orbit (October 1, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 1, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1091 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 393 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #29,286 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #32 in LGBTQ+ Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #170 in Hard Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #245 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3,037 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		55%
4 star		24%
3 star		10%
2 star		6%
1 star		5%

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Top reviews from the United States

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JustADude

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Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2019

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Very typical sentence from this book: "There was, as yet, no official temple in Ors - these are all primarily dedicated to Amaat, any other gods on the premises take lesser places, and the head priest of Ikkt had not seen her way clear to demoting her god in its own temple, or identifying Ikkt with Amaat closely enough to add Radchaii rites to her own". Putting aside, just for a moment, the run-on sentence and unbelievably bad writing overall (any high school writing teach would give it an "F"), it is an absolutely unintelligible sentence. I read 75 pages prior to it and I have absolutely no idea what these things are, what any of it means, or how anyone could possibly care. No, I did not spend hours picking my way through to find the worst sentence in the book. I actually picked it quite at random. MOST of the sentences in the book are just as run-on, just as poorly written, and just as indecipherable. And no, none of them became any more clear when I read on.

I read about 20 sci fi books a year. I love a few, enjoy most and find virtually all of them worthwhile. Only once every few years do I encounter a book that is so bad that I can't finish it. I could not finish this one and it is easily the worst book that I've ever tried to read. I kept at it for days trying to find what the award people and four/five star reviewers enjoyed. I just went back and read a few dozen of the high reviews to see what I was missing with the idea that I'd start over and look harder for those positive attributes. Unfortunately, they mostly just say that it's a good story with good characters (neither of which I can understand) and many even say that it's good writing (which absolutely boggles my mind). So, I went ahead and read the 1* reviews and found virtually all of them to be spot-on. It is as indecipherable and boring as the 1* reviewers say. I have a pretty good imagination but can't even begin to fathom what the four and five star reviewers are referring to. I realize that this pretty much comes down to a "he said"/"she said" as to whether it's good or not but all I can do is tell you that I found it to be a brutal slog with not a single redeeming quality that I saw or could possibly anticipate. I highly recommend that you spend your money elsewhere. At a minimum, if you have a Kindle, get a sample first and know that it gets more dense and nonsensical as it goes, rather than less.

175 people found this helpful

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Timbo

Excruciating writing triumphs with brain dead award committee.

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2018

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Did not enjoy. Cumbersome writing attached to a ponderous notion and badly sprung and lumbering plot. Has the Hugo become some sort of sci-fi postmodernist Turner Prize? Asking for a friend.

113 people found this helpful

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Ray L. Bieber

Gave up after about 40%

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2019

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The prose is awkward and cumbersome. Far too many made-up words and phrases that were still indecipherable after reading almost half the book. The story line is banal and mundane; character development nil, and is in no way engaging. Even the main concept of a multi-part AI (about 20 if I remember correctly) with no indication how they interact falls flat. Are they: peer-to-peer; master/slave; all able to communicate with all; or only to the master; requires outboard network or power; etc. I am astounded that this novel received any awards at all. It is in no way in the class of SciFi as that written by Asimov, Herbert, Card, and many others. I could not force myself to finish the book.

63 people found this helpful

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Excellent Space Opera with detailed cultures and backstories

Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2018

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don't know why I sat on this one for so long. I loved it! It was admittedly difficult to follow along at first, but it got easier as the book went on. I had already read Leckie's Provenance which is actually not a bad introduction to the world at all, but I might have to re-read and see if there's anything I missed.

At first, this book is told in two plot threads that focus on the same character, a present timeline and a series of flashbacks. Although it's not always a format that works for me (I usually become more interested in one story over another) it worked here. In the present timeline the reader is trying to figure out what all Breq, the MC, is actually doing and why she's doing it, and that story is given to you in tidbits, via the past. So they worked in tandem very well.

I absolutely loved the world building, the different religions and gods, the quirks of Breq's character (she has a penchant for singing, humming, and learning new songs). There is an absolutely fascinating concept introduced here that I can honestly say I've only seen in about two other books, that is: one mind (whether human or AI) sharing multiple bodies. I can't expand on it without spoilers, but Leckie utilized the concept in a wonderful way and didn't waste it.

One of my only complaints, is that I cannot actually tell you the physical sex of a single character in this book. Breq tends to use "she" for everyone, as she repeatedly states that she is very bad at guessing the gender of anyone, and the Radch do not actually use gendered pronouns. Sometimes gender is revealed in her conversations with other people in languages that are not Radch, but honestly in my head I was picturing planets of Amazons. Looking back the only character that registered as male to me was incredibly minor and had no speaking lines.

Which brings me onto the characters themselves: I adored them. Breq is a clear favorite, and even as an AI she had more life to her than most fictional characters. Through the entire beginning of the book, I hated Seivarden, but she experiences a lot of character growth over the course of the book and by the end she was one of my favorites. Even though the plot was complex and I still don't entirely understand everything that happened, the characters and their relationships with each other was enough for me to keep reading.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys character driven space operas.

44 people found this helpful

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Peter Costello

Did I miss something?

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2018

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what is going on? It feels like I missed the first book, but this is the first book. I was confused for most of the book and therefore was bored and basically grudge read the whole book.

48 people found this helpful

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Gerard A Thomas

Too much hard work

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2019

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I picked this up based on the awards it has been given. Unfortunately I can not see why, in the least, it was awarded anything.

While the concepts that form the backbone of the story arc are thought provoking, the book as a whole is an effort to read, with a laboured style and a complete lack of momentum. This is the first science fiction novel (or novel in general) that I have had to force myself to keep reading in the hope it would get better... it didn't.

34 people found this helpful

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F. M. Havicon

Dull. tedious and at times excruciating

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 10, 2020

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Irrespective of the ideas, characters and plotlines, the actual narrative prose is dull and tedious, often dipping down to the excruciating. This writer has no literary talent that I can identify, beyond a baseline deadpan delivery of over-indulgent facts. The sci fi industry spent the 1960s and 70s doing its best to improve the literacy of its writers...and now this precocious garbage is what wins awards. Must have been a very bad year for writing.

16 people found this helpful

nivlanat

Interesting, original, but a difficult read and not for everyone

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2016

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Interesting concepts, and fairly original premise, if quite difficult to read and very slow to get off the ground. The use of 'she' pronoun for everyone, even though explained early on, is unhelpful in aiding the reader picture scenes and characters, and takes a lot of getting used to. Substantial focus on tea drinking and religious ceremony / ornamentation, especially early on, will bore certain readers, especially when combined with the writer's (bad) habit of trying to be clever by explaining concepts after (sometimes long after) inferring knowledge of those concepts in speech and internal thought processes - leaves one constantly jumping back and forth in the book.

43 people found this helpful

M. Dowden

Old School Space Opera

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2019

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At last I have now read Ann Leckie’s debut novel, that gained the author numerous fans and a number of awards. The first book in a trilogy this is very much an old school space opera, and our main character here as we soon learn is not a person as we would recognise as such. We find ourselves entering the Radch Empire, where the actual Radchaai do not really recognise gender, and so in this book everyone is referred to as she. There is a reason for this because our heroine although looking like a relatively normal human actually is an ancillary of a star ship, Justice of Toren.

Although some people cannot seem to get their heads around it, it is actually an easy concept to grasp. A spaceship in this book has artificial intelligence, and to function properly it has people connected to it, so that it can carry out maintenance, send out scouts and assist with the everyday running of the vessel. These people are then like robots to a certain extent. These are people who have been ‘bridged’ with the AI, and so no longer have their own consciousness and are all connected, so what one knows or sees, theoretically all the other parts do.

This has the usual tropes you would expect, such as an evil empire as such, and the other elements, but there is certainly some fun here as our ancillary unit does have trouble communicating in languages that have gender specific pronouns, not sure if what she is going to say will cause offence. We only know really a few of the characters’ actual gender, which leaves us if we want to try and work out the other ones.

Taking in revenge and working on deeper levels, this does raise questions such as what is free will, and do we have it? And, also what happens when an ancillary unit is the last left of a ship, due to destruction, and what will it do, and other issues that can arise when humans become too interconnected with technology and possible unintended outcomes.

With flashbacks to the past, as well as the present time this novel is set, so we end up with something that is certainly worth reading and is exciting and enjoyable, with action and some derring-do.

6 people found this helpful

Georgiana89

Fascinating ideas and an okay plot

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 29, 2017

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This book was a little further into the realms of hard sci-fi than I generally tend to go, but the concept intrigued me - a warship's AI trapped in a human body and seeking revenge on the evil empire it once worked for.

On the whole, the book lived up to the premise. The main character stuck a nice balance between strange and relateable, sympathetic and ruthless. The ruling empire was painted in interesting shades of grey - bringing harmony and civilization to the planets it colonises while doing terrible things in the process.

There were two particularly interesting ideas. The first was the concept of ancilliaries. In short, the empire turns captured soldiers into willing collaborators by somehow possessing them with the minds of AIs. This was equal parts chilling and fascinating, though at times, I thought it could have been played with even more. The main character firmly identifies as Justice of Toren, the name of the spaceship it was the AI on. In flashbacks, it is shown to simultaneously being conscious of controlling the ship and in being in the bodies of all its hundreds of ancilliaries. And in the present, it definitely considers itself to be Justice of Toren, with no consideration given to whoever the body it is in originally was. While this is intriguing, I sometimes felt it could have been taken further. I never quite got a real sense of how the AIs sense of self functioned in the days when it was still spread across lots of people.

The second interesting idea was around gender and pronouns. The Radh (the colonists who created the main character) have no sense of gender and use one generic pronoun, which is translated as "she". It was unclear whether they are biologically unisex or have just abandoned all cultural constructs around gender. But the way the narrator referred to everyone (including those outside of the Radh, who had standard conceptions of gender) as "she" (despite the fact many of them turned out to be biologically male and identify that way) created a weird disconnect.

The plot and characters were less engaging than the world building and ideas, but still perfectly fine to keep you reading..

Overall, I found this a different and enjoyable read. I will probably read the sequel at some point, but don't feel in any rush to pick it up.

14 people found this helpful

Manda Scott

Outstanding - essential reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2018

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It’s a long, long time since I read anything as involving, as intelligent, as many-layered as this. The concept of an AI that becomes human is not new. The concept of a *ship* that becomes human is new to me and is carried off with a depth and compassion that deserves the highest accolades. This book fully deserves its Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C Clarke. It should be up there for the Booker and the Pulitzer, but our world is too full of the wrong kinds of hierarchies. Still, it’s brilliant. I am in awe of the depth - and the way the two timelines, so seemingly disparate, come back together and weave into something genuinely nail-biting. Read it now. You’ll be glad you did.

9 people found this helpful

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