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Dec. 11th, 2014 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsA 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!
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!
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Date: 2014-12-12 01:21 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2014-12-12 08:13 pm (UTC)I really do love One Esk's single-minded revenge drive, too, although I think I began to struggle with it towards the end of AJ because... up till then the rest of the world was merrily unconcerned with One Esk's quest, but in the last third I started feeling like *everything* was ticking towards the ordained final confrontation, and it flattened the story a bit for me. I want to make a Bring up the Bodies comparison here but am not sure either our favorite spaceship or Cromwell would appreciate it. :'I
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Date: 2014-12-12 08:30 pm (UTC)(I guess that makes Progressive Mianaai Dios and Reactionary Mianaai Akio? Drinking milkshakes on the merry-go-round as Lieutenant Awn is stabbed from behind!)
Yeah, I mean, I agree with that; I'd forgotten just how much everything starts zooming into the final confrontation, and on the reread I was like "-- wait, now? Already? What happened to months of trying to get her attention while the uncaring and oppressive bureaucracy of empire continued to grind itself unceasingly onward?"
...I tried to follow the Bring Up the Bodies comparison but then I just got stuck on imagining how happy Cromwell would be if his entire Cromwellian empire could just be staffed by ancillary Cromwells.
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Date: 2014-12-12 08:57 pm (UTC)Anyway, Awn and One Esk in a Utena context is the saddest thing in the world. Jesus. Awn's so DEAD, I appreciate that in a character.