Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Published by Orbit on October 1, 2013

There are echoes of C.J. Cherryh, Iain Banks, and Frank Herbert in Ancillary Justice. The novel is both familiar and fresh. The writing is powerful and tense. The plot -- about which I will say little, lest I risk spoiling it -- is intelligent and surprising.

The Radchaii are human but they consider themselves superior to other humans. The Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai, controls Radch space with the help of thousands of genetically identical, linked bodies. Extra bodies seem handy (wish I had some) but they prove to have unforeseen consequences. The Radch rule by conquest, annexing other human worlds and forcing their inhabitants to join the Radch or to surrender their bodies to be used as ancillaries, otherwise known as corpse soldiers (an ancient practice that has been mostly abandoned). They justify their actions with the belief that they are imposing order and justice on the universe. They control annexed planets by coopting the privileged class, allowing them to retain their social status provided they embrace the Radch. The one exception is Garsedd, a planet the Radch destroyed because the Garseddai posed a threat the Radch could not tolerate.

The protagonist of Ancillary Justice, having been manufactured by the Radchaai, is sometimes a ship called Justice of Toren, sometimes an ancillary called One Esk, sometimes other ancillaries. As the novel begins, however, the protagonist is called Breq. All of those identities should be the same, but Justice of Toren/One Esk/Breq is having an identity crisis. No longer endowed with the abilities of an AI, Breq has the weaknesses of a human ... without quite being human. In the first pages, Breq saves a Radchaai named Seivarden (who once served on Justice of Toren) from hypothermia. The story then alternates between the present (Breq is tracking someone in order to obtain something ... more than that I won't reveal) and a past in which One Esk was serving the Radchaai, who had just used ruthless means to annex a planet called Shis'urna. The final element of the story is the Presger, a race of aliens who once made pests of themselves by dismantling Radch ships.

The novel's background is more intricate than I've sketched out here. It is initially confusing ... but initial confusion caused by complexity is better than boredom caused by pages of exposition. Everything falls into place well before the novel's midway point. Ann Leckie plays with gender and culture in ways that are interesting but subtle. Her prose is robust.

The story builds upon a familiar moral struggle -- whether to follow unjust orders if the penalty for disobedience is death. If doing the right thing will have dire personal consequences, is it best to do the right thing only when it will make a difference? And how does one know whether doing the right will make a difference? These are difficult questions and Ancillary Justice brings them into sharp focus in different ways. More than one character, not all of them human, must make a choice of that nature. Ancillary Justice makes the point that virtue is easy to achieve in the abstract but easily vanishes when the lives of the "virtuous" are at stake. It makes the equally salient point that it is easy to judge when it isn't your life that is at stake. At the same time, this isn't a preachy novel. Leckie leaves it to the reader to draw whatever lessons might be taken from it. The blend of philosophy and adventure, the imaginative culture-building, and the strong characters all add up to an impressive work of science fiction.

RECOMMENDED