Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

Ancillary Mercy

by Ann Leckie

I discussed Ms. Leckie just last week so let me discuss Orbit, the publishing company. Orbit is a science fiction and fantasy publishing company founded in 1974 as part of the Macdonald Futura publishing company. It has dedicated publishing teams in the UK and the US, with an Australian group established in 2006. It currently functions as a imprint of Little, Brown Book Group which bought the Macdonald Futura in 1992.

Ancillary Mercy was published in 2015 and received the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and nominated for a Hugo Award. It is the last book in the Ancillary trilogy, let's take a look. Fair warning, there will be spoilers for the last two books, so if you haven't taken a look at them yet you might want to come back to this review later.

Fleet Captain Breq was once an ancillary; a cyborg soldier controlled by a ship AI. In Breq's case that was the Justice of Toren (an interesting note is that Justice is a ship class, the Radchaai empire had three: Justices, Swords, and Mercies). The Justice of Toren was destroyed by the Lord of the Radchaai empire Anaander Mianaai when the ship reacted to an order to kill a ship's officer. Breq was the sole survivor, a lone shard of the ship AI housed in a single body. Over the last two books Breq has pursued her goals with the single-minded determination you would expect of a computer paired with the adaptability you would expect from a human being. Those goals being to gain a measure of revenge on Anaander Mianaai and to protect the closest kin of that murdered officer. Breq manages to be very human and very alien at the same time in this series, I'm not sure how much of this is from the alien culture of the Radchaai. That said, Fleet Captain Breq, has achieved everything she set out to accomplish. Of course, achieving your goals is great, but you also have to hold on to what you have. While Breq may have secured the system of Athoek, she now has to deal with the rest of the Galaxy and what it thinks of her actions.

Breq has just about faced down all opposition within the system, out maneuvering Captain Hetnys and using him as a hostage to keep his ship AI in line. In doing that, she made an ally (more or less) out of the local Station due to showing concern for the undergardens; a section of the Station that had been allowed to fall to neglect and cut off from the rest. As you might imagine this bred some resentment in the AI who was built to care about the station and look after the people who were living on it. Breq however stepped in and while there was some damage in the ensuing confrontation, it meant in the end that the undergardens will be rebuilt and reconnected with the rest of the station. Additionally, with the aid of the young Lt. Tisarwat (I'll get to her in a moment) she's built a political support base among the leaders of the station and the planet. However, Breq's plan of simply rebuilding the undergardens and letting the people who were living there illegally move right back and take up legal residence just makes too much sense to go unchallenged. In this case the head priest of the the Station takes it on himself to publicly protest this, pushing for the idea that the large spacious quarters of the newly refurbished undergardens go to the “right” kind of people instead of actual residents. This is fueled by the ethnic divisions I discussed last review. See the people living in the undergarden are all Ychana. A group that has stubbornly held to its own traditions and beliefs after conquest by the Radchaai. As a result they get to live at the bottom of the economic and social ladder of Athoek. Meanwhile the Xhai, an ethnic group that assimilated to Radchaai culture and ideals gets to be the dominant group in the system and some of them just can't stand the idea of a group of half criminal, barely civilized Ychana (as they think of them) getting anything nice. I'm not sure if this was intentional but this part of the novel almost works as a comment on gentrification (there’s no ‘almost’ about it).

Gentrification is a process that occurs in cities when low class neighborhoods for whatever reason find themselves being economically revived (read: bought out, eminent domained, condemned, torn down, and then rebuilt on the extreme end. Or simply… invaded by rich people who drive up the prices). The process brings in more affluent residents and can, unless counteracted, end up pushing out the original residents of the neighborhoods who find themselves unable to afford the rising rents and prices of their own homes. This is often resisted and can lead to conflicts between the lower class residences who understandably don't like being pushed out of their own homes and upper class residences who want their homes to be comfortable and convenient (And oh so fashionable! It’s a cycle. I could rant about for days…) I'm not sure if this was accidental or on purpose though so I don't want to put too much weight on this.

This event gives us another interesting look into Radchaai culture. The Radchaai live under a Dictatorship, with all authority under Anaander Mianaai; who is supposed to be perfect and just and never does anything wrong. As such voicing out loud that the government is being unjust is... Discouraged. Radchaai therefore protest things by voicing no such thing. The head priest for example simply sits out front of his temple and refuses to do any work whatsoever. This is a problem because Radchaai temples are where you register things like births, deaths, marriages and so on. Meanwhile a good number of normal citizens who are not upper or lower class have started their own protest of the Head Priest by standing in line. You see in the Radchaai empire you don't need to stand in line, you can call up your local government office set up an appointment or get anything you need hashed out with the Station AI directly. So why bother? Well, it makes a great form of protest against actions you are opposed to. Which shows us something, it doesn't matter how efficient and ruthless your security force is. It doesn't matter how constricting and hide-bound your society is: people will find ways to protest what they hate and people will find out why they're protesting. While station security panics a bit at this, Breq is smart enough to just allow both protests to continue and assign Lt. Tisarwat to finding a way around this. Let's discuss her now.

Lt. Tisarwat is a brand new officer who was assigned to Fleet Captain Breq's ship right before leaving for the Athoek system by Anaander Mianaai (it's amazing how much goes back to her isn't it?). The reason for this was simple: so the Lord of the Radchaai could have a presence in Athoek. Using ancillary implants Anaander Mianaai took the young officer, destroyed her personality and implanted her own into Lt. Tisarwat's body (Excuse me, I’ll be over here screaming in existential horror.). Breq figured this out and during the events of Ancillary Sword destroyed the Mianaai personality in turn. Leaving the body of Lt. Tisarwat alive but inhabited by someone who wasn't Lt. Tisarwat or Anaander Mianaai anymore. In Ancillary Mercy we get a closer look at just what that means. As you may remember kind readers, Anaander Mianaai is at war with herself; her personality is divided under the stress of having genocided an entire system and having been forced to make a treaty with the alien Presger forbidding further conquest. One side believes the Presger have infiltrated the Radchaai Empire to destroy it from within and that she was right to order the murder of every living man, woman, and child in a star system for the crime of resisting the Radchaai war machine too well. The other believes the Presger have done no such thing and it was a mistake to commit genocide. It was this later one who killed Lt. Tisarwat to hijack her body, Lt. Tisarwat was 17. What remains is a person who doesn't know who she is and is in need of great deal of help. The relationship between Tisarwat and Breq hovers on the parental, which makes sense because it's due to Breq's action that this new person even exists. Lt. Tisarwat also serves to remind us that even if one side of this civil war is kinder to Breq, in the end it's still a tyrant manic who thought that stretching her mind and personality across thousands of bodies and leading a campaign of conquest and destruction across of human space were perfectly reasonable and justified actions... On the basis that she wanted to. Anaander Mianaai, no matter which of her you speak to is someone who regards all human beings as mere tools to be used for her own ends. That's the problem when you declare yourself the final arbitrator of all that is just and good in the universe, what is just starts becoming whatever is most convenient for you.

To make matters worse, the other Anaander Mianaai is heading towards Athoek and this one has even less qualms then the one who murdered Lt. Tisarwat. This one regards Breq as her enemy and believes her to be an agent of the Presgar. This is complicated by the fact that a Presgar translator has shown up in Athoek. I've been dancing around this so let me address the Presgar briefly. The Presgar are an alien race of massive power and are, frankly, beyond our understanding. Before the treaty Presgar would, for lack of a better word, prey on humanity and its ships. Appearing without warning and disassembling whatever they got a hold of. Stations, cities, ships... People. The treaty, which the Presgar hold is with all humans because they don't understand the idea of political divisions it seems is a simple one. The Radchaai will not commit any more violence against other humans or other aliens. In return the Presgar recognize humanity as significant beings and therefore having the right to... Live. It's basically a ‘do what we tell you and we'll stop hunting you for sport’ kind of agreement. On the one hand, I'm not a huge fan but on the other if it keeps Mianaai contained and keeps aliens of immense power and unguessable motives from turning my internal organs into external wall decorations I suppose it's an acceptable sacrifice, as most of us like our insides staying that way. 

Breq has to figure out what the partly human, mostly alien translator is here for while dealing with an invasion of Radchaai ships that outnumber and outgun her led by an implacable immortal maniac out of for her blood. She also has to do this fast as the longer she waits the more likely that Mianaai is going to start killing people. Luckily she's made allies, she has tools and she's willing to go all in. This is her final confrontation with the enemy and whether or not she'll survive will depend on not just her skills but the skill of her crew, officers and the AI's she's befriended along the way.

Ancillary Mercy is a adventure story set in a political upheaval as Breq attempts to stand away from the major events of her time but finds them coming to her no matter what she does. There’s a fair amount of subtle social and political commentary of the type that science fiction is great at delivering by putting these events in far off, fictional alien cultures. It manages to deliver that commentary without raising the reader’s defensiveness. It also helps that Breq doesn't preach about the flaws in her society or go on long rants but instead simply exists in her society and doesn't pull back from it's flaws. She does attempt to fix what she can and limit the damage done when she can't but not in service to any political agenda beyond basic decency. Which I can appreciate. While it looks like this book is the end of Breq's story, Ms. Leckie leaves a lot of room for further stories set in this universe and I hope she continues to explore it. I'm giving Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie an A-. Give it a spin.

Next week we change gears a bit with the Bookburners, season I. Keep Reading!

This review edited by Dr. Ben Allen.