(no subject)

[skygiants]

A month behind everyone else: I read Ancillary Sword!

I didn't love it as much as I loved Ancillary Justice, but this is one of those situations where I loved Ancillary Justice so much that the sequel was never going to quite live up to it.

Generally I'm more interested in One Esk at the bottom of the power structure without resources than in One Esk Large And In Charge ... I mean this is mostly a personal thing to me because my favorite One Esk is super passive-aggressive One Esk, and as a Person In Charge she is required to be less passive-aggressive, which is probably good for the people around her but not as fun for me. >.> It also means ... hmm. I'm not exactly complaining about the fact that Esk is now apparently on a mission to upend unjust power structures, and I also appreciate how ... inherently unfixable some of it was? But I do feel like this time around we didn't get as many of her particular blind spots, both interpersonally and in terms of power structures and ways of setting up civilization that the Radch take for granted. She was right a little too often, by which I mean right in terms of plot decisions and understanding people's motivations, and also in terms of modern social justice concerns. Not enough pushing of One Esk herself, not enough growth. I'm more excited for the third book, when all the problems will be bigger, and push her harder, and also probably be super interesting (depressed exiled three thousand-year-old spaceship? YES PLEASE.)

Also I didn't realize how attached I was to Seivarden until she was mostly offscreen for 3/4 of the book. But the fact that I am deeply attached to Seivarden should not honestly be surprising given that she is a terrible snob, a really self-absorbed person earnestly attempting to learn unselfishness by the numbers, and A HILARIOUS INTERPERSONAL FAILBOAT WITH A HOPELESS CRUSH ON A SPACESHIP WHO'S JUST NOT THAT INTO HER.

I did find everything to do with Tisarwat really fascinating; I continue to be curious about whether One Esk is being an unreliable narrator (or, you know, having a giant blind spot) about how much the pre-ancillary personality affects the ancillary person that results. And the complex awkward interpersonal spaceship dynamics were also pretty great, and I loved every single one of the Mercy of Kalr non-ancillaries. Ann Leckie also did a fantastic job conveying a sense of One Esk's Mercy of Kalr-linked perceptions that was still visibly distinct and different from the actual multiple-bodiedness of Justice of Toren. I don't know, I would probably have been happy with a whole book that was just everyone hanging out on Mercy of Kalr, really.

I remember seeing a bunch of reaction posts last month that I could not read at the time; if you made one, link me? I'm very curious what everyone else thought!

Comments

[ambyr]

I still need to write my reaction post, but it will be soooooon!

[skygiants]

I WILL BE WAITING.

[kaberett]

I ADVOCATE flower_of_justice TO BOTH OF YOU AND WILL REACT TO THIS POST PROPERLY LATER

[sapote]

Agreed about her being right a little too often! First when she ground everything to a halt to help Piat with her abusive relationship, to my mind - it wasn't that I wanted Piat to suffer, and I think that might actually have been an interesting macro/micro moment where Breq was having trouble not being a spaceship - but if so, how much social engineering are spaceships supposed to do? And yes, Breq/One Esk needed to find a way to get Raughd under control, but. IDK. I wound up feeling weird with myself for not liking that moment. And then again when she's able to say the exact right thing to Queter's family to allay their generations-old mistrust and fear of the Radch and persuade them to go through proper channels in the course of a single evening. It felt a little too easy.

Favorite part: One Esk's complete disinterest upon overhearing Seivarden discuss her own extreme sexual availability re: One Esk. Oh, Seivarden, pine even more, please.

[skygiants]

Yeah, agreed. I was actually somewhat surprised to find out that Station AIs are generally expected to sort out/intervene in abusive relationships, in general; I'd sort of like to know more about how that works, actually, and if it ever backfires, because I would certainly imagine that it does. And the whole interaction with Queter and her family -- she has so much patience, and so much ability to say exactly the right thing, and even though it doesn't help everything it's all so clearly the best thing that could possibly be said. I keep comparing it against the interaction with the doctor who owns the Garseddai gun in Ancillary Justice (and what a great interaction that is), when Breq was, like, yes, acknowledging the injustice of it all, but also being extremely Radchaai about it, not caring in the least if she pisses the other person off -- and of course it has to be different when Breq is in the position of greater power, and Breq knows it has to be different when she's in the position of greater power, that she has to be more careful. I'm glad that she is being careful, but I would have liked to see it be harder for her.

THAT SCENE WAS ALSO MY FAVORITE PART. Oh my god, Seivarden. Oh my god. And meanwhile One Esk just serenely patting herself on the back for matchmaking Seivarden and the other lieutenant, isn't it nice that their physical needs are both being taken care of now!

[gogollescent]

You know, it's funny because I had exactly the same annoyed reactions to a lot of the One Esk-in-power-and-managing-everything-beautifully stuff, and yet I still ended up liking Ancillary Sword a bit better--what's more, I think I liked it better because of the altered power dynamics and not in spite of them, though I wish Leckie had made it a much more awkward transition. (And structured her plot to accommodate that awkwardness, rather than relying on the Even A Perfect Interlocutor Can't Unmake A Fucked Up System dynamic. Though of course that's true. Still, how often is the problem actually one of 'people who would do everything right if they could instead wander around banging their heads against the institutional wall'?)

[skygiants]

If you're wondering why you saw a bunch of kudos earlier on old tumblr posts of yours, it's because I remembered you'd made an Ancillary Sword reaction post and went hunting for it. Yeah, I definitely get liking Ancillary Sword better. It's not that One Esk In Power (But Not In That Much Power Because The Power Of Institutionalized Assholery Is Stronger Still) is not an interesting story to tell, it's just that the book reads less directly like Utena fanfic where an unleashed Anthy Himemiya goes on a mission of revenge.

ETA: and in a comment below I just realized Seivarden is the Nanami in this fanfic allegory revenge roadtrip. Jesus, no wonder I love Ancillary Justice so much.

[vass]

She was right a little too often

I noticed that too. She was wrong often enough that it didn't seriously put me off, but only just.

I am so overinvested in these books it's not even funny.

a really self-absorbed person earnestly attempting to learn unselfishness by the numbers

That's a really good description of it.

Have you read the short stories?

http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/06/nights-slow-poison-ann-leckie
http://strangehorizons.com/2014/20141110/commands-f.shtml

[skygiants]

I HAVE NOT, I forgot the short stories existed! Thank you for the links, that is gonna be my reward for doing all the stuff I have to do today. :D :D :D :D

I also am super overinvested in these books, and, like, I didn't like Ancillary Sword as MUCH, but that doesn't mean that I am not still kind of obsessed with Imperial Radch as a series and One Esk as the world's judgiest human-shaped spaceship.

[damselfish]

I think I only made a tumblr post demanding people actually read the book because they didn't read AJ when I demanded they did. I never did write up a proper reaction, which I probably should have, because I inhaled the book in a few hours and while it delighted me as few books can (Leckie pulls all the right strings for me) it felt... easier than AJ but also oddly more hopeless. Breq solved a lot of problems but the world is inherently unfixable by one person. Breq's not there to fix the world, but my narrative desire is to "omg but the hero must make it right." There's a lot to unpack about how books focusing on heroes have really skewed our narrative perceptions (I've seen a lot of criticism aimed at AJ about how the plot made no sense because Breq's plan isn't to take down the empire and it won't even work). While AJ has a lot in it about unfixable systems, coming from an underdog you don't feel the same sense of duty to fix it, as a reader. I didn't, anyway.

That didn't interfere with my enjoyment, though. On reflection, it probably should.

My main take-away from AS was TISARWAT. Maybe the most poignant bit to me in the entire book was her reaction to her poetry.

But the story did suffer from a lack of Seivarden but I also think there's not really much else for Seivarden and Breq to do--the crush isn't going anywhere. They make an amazing team, but possibly less so with Esk Large and in Charge as they did when they were ridiculous underdogs who barely had a plan (and it was all One Esk anyway, Seivarden was just there to look pretty and confused and complain).

I think I actually liked AS more than AJ. It swept me along with a sort of... giddy delight even when horrible things were happening. I think AJ's a better book, but AS practically had me squealing. ...Maybe it was all Tisarwat's doing, though.

[skygiants]

I literally shoved Ancillary Justice into genarti's hands like three days after I read it. "NO YOU HAVE TO READ IT NOW otherwise it'll get overhyped and I won't be able to help overhyping it and you'll get resentful of it and won't like it! THE TIME IS NOW."

Yeah, I think that's a really good point -- in the first book we all know that One Esk had no chance to change the whole of the Radch, and all she needed to do was make one choice that mattered, one right choice. But now that she's survived that one right choice and grown in power, that one right choice has to be made again and again and again and again and it still won't always do much good. Which ... is I think a true thing to say, and (as with a couple of comments on here) thinking of it that way makes me like what the book is doing more than I did, even though it's less fun for me personally to read, and even though I think it could have been done better.

Yeah, I'm not sure what else there is for Seivarden and Breq to do either but I've been spoiled by fanfic -- "I like this dynamic! MORE OF THIS PLEASE." Well, that's not quite true, I do think that Seivarden's journey is not done, because recovering from addiction and long years of being kind of a jerk are not easy, and we got hints of that towards the end and presumably will have more in the next book. But Tisarwat is FASCINATING, I'm certainly not complaining about the amount of Tisarwat.

[alias_sqbr]

My vague review of both books.

I am SO looking forward to the next book, yes.

I enjoyed the chance to see Breq being happy and getting things done instead of being as sad and frustrated as she was in the previous book, but yeah her being in such a position of power did make things less interesting in some ways.

[skygiants]

Thanks for linking!

I'm not sure I would describe One Esk in Sword as 'happy' exactly -- I think Tisarwat's constant flashes of anger and self-frustration that won't ever go away are a pretty good parallel to the way that One Esk probably feels a lot of the time -- but yeah, she definitely has more scope for movement now, and a ship that loves her, and that means a lot. But I still want to see her pushed more to grow.

[jinian]

Ahahaha when you put it that way, yes, of course you love Seivarden. I was happy to see less of her myself. :)

[skygiants]

It's the Diana Wynne Jones thing. :( Characters who are explicitly acknowledged as awful in petty ways and then have to try and do better are kryptonite to me. Mitt Alhamittson! Nanami Kiryuu!

(There's a significant dividing line somewhere here between this and REDEMPTION ARC FOR THE EVIL WOOBIE which I usually don't like at all, and, like, I think I know what the difference is but I'm having trouble putting it into words.)

[kate_nepveu]

http://steelypips.org/weblog/2014/11/leckie-ann-02-ancillary-sword/

and just now I saw

http://lightreads.dreamwidth.org/172804.html

which is also interesting.

[skygiants]

Thank you for linking! :)

[cahn]

Here's my review. There were a lot of things I liked about it. But I... sort of thought that it was trying too hard to make Breq into a social justice warrior?

I also thought it might have benefited from another narrator (my vote would have been Tisarwat).

[skygiants]

Thanks for the link!

"Social justice warrior" is one of those phrases, like "Mary Sue," that I instinctively cringe whenever I see it used because it's used so often as a weapon in ways that make me uncomfortable.

...that said, yeah, I kind of agree that I don't 100% believe in One Esk's sudden firm commitment to social justice as understood in a 21st-century context. I think the first book avoided that more by having her morality center around the citizen/noncitizen distinction; maybe if that had been hit harder? I think if we were going to go down that road I wanted more jarring disconnects between One Esk's perception of ethics and mine.

I ALSO would have loved to have Tisarwat as a narrator, and I actually think a narrative split (like we had between past-Justice of Toren and present-One Esk in the last book) might have worked really well.

[rmc28]

I thought Breq was following Awn's example in Ors, fairly explicitly.

Awn was trying to reach the most citizens, not the most "important" ones, and did things like divert funds for pretty-temple-accessories towards feeding people. Breq seems to be taking her as an example for How To Officer At Civilians.

[brownbetty]

yhlee's post made me feel like "wow, no point writing a review, because I'm not sure I could say anything not said here, nor half so in-depth.

[skygiants]

Thanks for the link! That post is fascinating. I still disagree that Sword is a stronger novel than the prequel, but people have definitely pulled many more really fascinating things out of it than I did on a first reading.

[yhlee]

I didn't mean to shut down other people's discussion of these books! :(

I came to Sword from the point of view of almost having bounced out of Justice in the first ten pages because having Seivarden turn up on Breq's doorstep at an "inn" in the middle of nowhere hit my "oh God no it's another bad Dungeons & Dragons coincidence scenario" buttons so hard that I backpedaled and it was months before I tried again. (I acknowledge this is a highly idiosyncratic response.)

I think #2 is better-written from the standpoint of thematic unity, but #1, hmm. What people say above about #2 trying too hard to hit all the 21st-century social justice brownie points is an argument I definitely sympathize with. It does seem very weird that Breq, who comes from a completely different culture and is not our kind of human, would suddenly develop all these attitudes. In fact, one of the reasons I liked having the terrorist sibling of the kid Raughd raped call out Breq on being very selective about whose lives she chose to help out with was that it was an instance of Breq not being visibly in the right.

That being said, I hope #3 returns to the larger scale of #1. #2 was interestingly different, and I can see why it's so claustrophobic, but I like my space operas to feel less so.

[yhlee]

Agh, sorry, I messed up somehow--this was intended to reply to brownbetty's comment.

[ariadnes_string]

Hi--Sorry to but in, but I followed the link from flower_of_justice, and was so glad to read your review, after seeing a lot of reactions that liked AS better.

I completely agree with you about Breq being right too often, and the emphasis on fixing things. And I especially agree about being sad about Seivarden being shuttled off to the sidelines--not just because I like Seivarden and her pining (which I really, really do!), but also because Breq's relationships with other people in AS seem so, I don't know, avuncular, to use a gendered adjective. She seems so intent on looking after people, deciding what's right for them, etc.--which is interesting, but I missed the kind of inchoate passion of her relationship to Awn in AJ (I expected AS to do much more with Breq's relationship to Basnaaid)*, and her anger towards Seivarden that gradually turns into something else. For me, AJ was a much more emotional book.

Anyway, the brief response I wrote when I read it is here. I do look forward to the third book, though!

*Breq's conversation with Skiaat about who loved Awn more at the end of AJ is one of the most wrenching parts of the book, for me.

[skygiants]

No apology necessary! It is always talking-about-Imperial-Radch-o'clock around here. :D

And yeah, I didn't have the words to quite pinpoint that, but that's it exactly! The love for Awn that she has no idea how to show, and the anger towards Seivarden -- especially because, like, Seivarden is pretty terrible at the beginning of the book, but One Esk's behavior towards her also is often not just unfair, but verging on cruel -- and that's also important, for the way in which it complicates One Esk. I miss dynamics that show One Esk at her worst.

But I also am super looking forward to the third book!

[davidgillon]

It's interesting how little discussion there is in all this of Basnaiad, who is, of course, Breq's real reason for accepting the mission. For me the core relationship dynamic driving the story and the evolution of characters is Breq with Basnaiad, as watched (and puzzled over?) by Tisarwat. Breq is trying to pay off a debt of honour (though I'm far from sure she would term it honour, though certainly a debt), Basnaiad is just as prickly as her sister was over the status of others and implications of relationships, and Tisarwat, our little, lost NOT(Aanander Mianaai), is watching that while trying to figure out her role in life as a former 18yo now playing host to 3000 years of AM's experience in political manipulation.

The Garseddai gun as a weapon could never have brought down the Radch, but, in Tisarwat, Breq, and AM (and a little bit of Awn by way of Basnaiad), may be forging just that.

[skygiants]

It's true! I've definitely overlooked Basnaaid in my discussions. I actually expected to see much more of Basnaaid, given the driving force of the last book; as it was she kind of faded from my view and recollection a lot as I was reading, which I sort of wish had not been the case.

I also felt like a bit of a failure because I could not figure out the reason that Breq thought she knew for why Tisarwat was crushing on Basnaaid, so if anyone would like to explain that to me I would be VERY APPRECIATIVE...

[hebethen]

I am even more behind than you, because the public library is a slow force for good. Not enough thoughts to make a post, but mainly that there's a certain satisfaction to watching her execute justice and scramble (other) powerful figures and that the conversation with Queter was so, so necessary -- on its own, but also in counterbalance.

I agree that this too is part of her love for Awn -- and as well that this could have been brought into more prominence, but I'm not sure how that would have been pulled off, since she is a very non-introspective narrator; external events would have to illuminate it somehow without going all Single Significant Moment. Hrm.

[skygiants]

I gave up and bought the book, since I was going on a trip and needed Kindle reading material; I mean, I'm pleased that the library lines are forever, because it means lots of people are reading the books, but on the other hand!

When I think of how I would have liked to see Breq's actions in this book made more a part of her affection for Awn, I think of how deftly it was shown in the last book that Breq's anger at Seivarden came out of her feelings for Awn. So, I mean, that budding social justice awareness is all part of the same thing -- but she was still struggling with how to productively express it in Ancillary Justice, and it seemed weirdly fully-formed here.