Ancillary Sword By Ann Leckie

Ancillary Sword

By Ann Leckie

Ann Leckie was born in 1962 and since then has lead an interesting life. She has by her own count been, a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a survey crew, and a recording engineer. She released her debut novel Ancillary Justice in 2013 while living with her husband and it received mass critical acclaim. I have reviewed the first novel and you can catch the link at the bottom of this review. She would follow up with two sequels (the first of which we are reviewing here) and additional works released in the same universe. She currently lives in St. Louis Missouri with her husband Dave and two children.

The most powerful human state in the galaxy is the Radchaai Empire. They come from a Dyson Sphere, led by the immortal and many bodied Anaander Mianaai, a single person who thousands of years ago decided to unify humanity under their rule. Anaander Mianaai is a single person spread across many minds through the use of technological implants, binding all those specially made bodies under a single personality and will. After unifying the peoples of the Dyson Sphere (because a Dyson Sphere is a big place, much, much bigger than Earth and look how many different cultures and peoples we have here) he led his fleets outward to annex planet after planet. To reduce the burden on his loyal citizens, he had the ancillaries created.

An ancillary is a cyborg human body with its personality destroyed and its mind linked to the AI of a military ship. In many ways it’s a high tech zombie. The person that used to be is dead and all that’s left is a body under the control of a foreign will and intelligence. Commanded by a small but capable citizen officer class, the ancillary armies and fleet of the Radchaai were unstoppable. Until they were stopped; halted by the intervention of a terrifying alien race who intervened in an indirect but unmistakable way by arming one of the planets that was being invaded by the Radchaai. The people of that system were utterly genocided by the order of Anaander Mianaai and a treaty that stopped the expansion was signed with the aliens. That decades-old genocide has had and is having consequences, however. Anaander Miannai has split themselves into two sides. One side believes that the genocide was a mistake and the treaty should be followed. The other side holds that they had every right to order the genocide and any action to limit or halt the expansion of the Radchaai (and therefore themselves) is an alien plot to destroy them. Breq, our main character, is one of those consequences and she is dealing with others throughout this book.

Breq was once One Esk, an ancillary (how is she an ancillary while maintaining an identity? The original personality is destroyed... {Justice of Toren had an identity and the Ancillaries are part of that identity}) on Justice of Toren, a massive troop ship that was destroyed in the opening moves of a civil war that Anaander Mianaai is fighting against themselves. In the last novel Breq was out to try and kill Anaander Mianaai, now she has a different mission. She’s been given a ship, Mercy of Kalr, and has been made a Fleet Captain (basically an admiral). She is heading for the Athoek system to try and make some effort at... Well I wouldn't call it redemption but perhaps restitution.

We often confuse the two in our society. This is partly because Christianity is so utterly a part of our cultural matrix that we tend to consider the two to be one in the same but they are honestly two different things. Redemption involves moving past the sin in question and becoming a better person who will not commit that sin anymore. Restitution involves trying to make amends or repayment for the sin or injury in question. You can redeem yourself without making restitution and make restitution without redemption. In Breq's case redemption is moot. The sin in question, the murder of a Lieutenant who was executed on the command of Anaander Mianaai for speaking up against an injustice, was not something she could have said no to. As an ancillary, she had no free will and as part of the Justice of Toren she could no more disobey the Lord of the Radchaai then I could fly just by standing in a field and wishing to. That doesn't mean Breq doesn't feel guilty or ashamed of those actions or that they feel that they are morally freed of responsibility for those same actions. Because of that, Breq is going to Athoek, where the younger sister of that Lieutenant is living in order to do whatever that sister asks of her to make whatever restitution she can.

Of course the universe isn't going to let Breq have it that easy. The unfolding civil war has led to a collapse in easy faster than light traffic leaving the system and Athoek very isolated. This means that in her capacity as a Fleet Captain, Breq will have to take steps to ensure the system's safety and continued good government. Assuming she can get the rest of the system government to agree with her idea of what good government is.  Which might be a struggle in and of itself.

In the last book we got a good introduction to basic Radchaai culture. Their language has no genders (everyone is referred to using the feminine pronouns) for example. They also have a somewhat sophisticated polytheistic religion which lends itself rather well to assimilating the gods and goddesses of other cultures (because they believe that gods are simply expressions of universal focuses and powers and thus can be be expressed in many different ways). Story telling wise this is actually a good move, as it moves the Radchaai away from the sensibilities of 21st century Americans and allows us to look at a society that’s something other than America in Space! Or Great Britain in Space! Which is another favorite of space opera writers. This makes the society itself a character in the story and in all honesty lets the writer examine themes and flaws within that society without getting to mired in contemporary baggage.

Breq herself is a great character to have, she’s deeply familiar with the customs, beliefs, and actions of the Radchaai but is herself an outsider. She is after all not entirely human as you or I would think of it; she’s the remaining splinter of a Ship AI housed in a human body. The story is told entirely through Breq's point of view but because of her cybernetic implants, she is able to see things through the eyes of her ship and the station orbiting the world of Athoek. This actually helps get around a lot of the problems of a single viewpoint character and is fairly clever.

In Ancillary Sword, which is focused entirely on a single system we are given a much closer look at Radchaai culture, it's assumptions and the actual facts on the ground. Let me give an example. The Radchaai tell themselves that there are no ethnic divisions within the empire. Once annexed and civilized (or stripped of your culture and having it replaced by one more acceptable to your Radchaai conquers) all divisions based on language, religion, gender, and race, simply fade away under the benevolent light of civilization; and make no mistake the Radchaai do believe themselves benevolent. In Athoek however, we can see that those statements don't quiet hold up and that Radchaai civilization doesn't grip as deep into the planet's soil as many would like to think. The dominant ethnic group, the Xhai have made themselves very comfortable under Radchaai rule by collaborating, because of that their religious festivals are celebrated openly, Xhai are represented at the top levels of the system government and they fully reap the many benefits of empire. Other native ethnic groups like the Ychana however, are exiled to the outer fringes of society unless they fully assimilate and become Radchaai and even then there are invisible barriers. The Radchaai have kept control by mostly working on assimilating the Xhai further into Radchaai society and clearing space for people of other ethnic groups who assimilate, while ignoring those who don't.

Of course these are only the problems that Breq has to deal with the on the surface, her ship is not the only military ship in the system. While she outranks Captain Hetnys, the good Captain has been in the system for a considerable amount of time and knows about the civil war as well, so there are open questions about whether he has picked a side, will he pick a side, and if so what will he do. What has he done already? Breq has to look into this while dealing with an entirely new ship and a mostly new crew and figuring out the intrigues and intricacies of the system. She will have to deal with crime, social injustices, and possible international incidents. The book gives us a good ground eye's view of what it means to live in the Radchaai empire, where there are many who do benefit but also a good number of people who are ground down by the system. We also see the many justifications the people on the top of the ladder use for why the people at the bottom, well, stay at the bottom. It's never that the system is rigged against them after all, it's always their own fault that they can't climb up (if you ask the people already at the top of course). But you should remember that the people at the bottom have their own ideas and while they may be denied education and resources, that doesn't always make a person stupid. Sometimes it just makes them angry.

The book series as a whole has been very adept in considering the costs and hypocrisies of empire, because the plain truth of human existence is that you cannot build an empire without taking advantage of someone or some group of people. In this book we get to see a microcosm of the Radchaai empire, how the lies that the Radchaai tell themselves feed into the social problems that they're experiencing and in some ways made the civil war that’s being fought mostly covertly inevitable. Even when your ruling class is more or less a single mind, when it gets big enough, disagreement is inevitable. While the civil war doesn't take up much space in the book, it lingers in the background driving various characters motivations and beliefs, causing conflict and action.

This isn't the first space opera to take the stance that empires and imperialism are bad or evil of course. Empires are a staple of this kind of science fiction, both as settings, and as antagonist/protagonist factions. Space opera stories are full of the fall of empires, glorious rebellions of freedom against empires, the rise of empires, and the glorious victories of empires over dastardly rebel scum. What Ms. Leckie does here is take a moment to look at what empire means. An empire is a single group of people establishing a single political and economic rule over many different groups of people and often dictates a certain set of behaviors, many of them exploitative and oppressive. It's also true that empires are often massively beneficial to a great many of its subjects creating united trade routes, bringing greater cultural and economic opportunities but those benefits come at a cost often paid for by the people at the bottom of the heap.

Ms. Leckie prevents this from becoming an anti-imperialist screed by making these things part and parcel of the story by having Breq be more concerned with the immediate tasks of making government work for everyone while making the system safe for the one person she came to be of service to. By simply having those elements sitting there and having her characters deal with them explicitly, she does a better job getting people thinking about this than any moral haranguing. Ms. Leckie doesn't beat you over the head with moral stances but rather lets you see the situations and problems that arise from the Radchaai’s relentless push to empire and the conflict between their stated beliefs and actions. I honestly really enjoyed this story, although it's easy to get lost if you haven't read Ancillary Justice so I am applying a penalty for that. Additionally the pace can get a little slow in the book as a number of side plots are dealt with, with the main plot all wrapping up at the end. Because of that I am giving Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie a B+. This is a good example of what modern space opera can be if it applies itself and it's a great example of rather good world building paired with interesting characters.

Next week, we finish the series! Join us for Ancillary Mercy, Keep Reading!

This review edited by Dr. Ben Allen.

Review of Ancillary Justice can be read here: http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2015/10/ancillery-justice-by-ann-leckie.html