Ancillary Justice

by Ann Leckie

There is a problem I’ve been noticing in recent years when I go to the bookstore. Up through college, when I went into a bookstore, I had a pretty good idea who the good authors were. Looking at a bookshelf, I had no trouble picking out things I wanted to read, and I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting.

But now when I go into a bookstore, I really don’t know which books are worth reading (apart from classics). I don’t recognize the authors, and the covers don’t tell me enough. Nothing looks interesting.

After reading Among Others, I decided I’d read some more sci-fi. I read the first Amber book (which wasn’t great), the Cat’s Cradle (not really sci-fi, but referenced in Among Others). I decided I should try to read something more recent, and I ended up on the Wikipedia page List of joint winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards. It lists the (currently 24) novels that have won both awards, so I started looking through those. That’s how I found Ancillary Justice.

I haven’t heard of Ann Leckie. The title sounds dumb. The cover looks cheap, like maybe a knock-off of the Expanse books. But it won both awards, so I decided to give it a shot, with no further knowledge. I didn’t even read the plot description.

And I really enjoyed it! It was unique and told from a perspective I hadn’t read before. It did take a while before I really understood what was going on, but that wasn’t a problem.

I am writing these notes for myself, but in case anyone else reads this, I am about to completely spoil the plot, mostly to remind myself what happens in the book. With fiction, I often forget lots of (all?) the details shortly after reading, and writing these notes is intended to help me combat that. So, SPOILERS BELOW!*

The universe is largely ruled by a race called the Radchaii. They are a lot like the Romans – civilized, with an extensive empire, folding the gods of other races into their own pantheon, and considering non-Radchaii uncivilized. The name Radchaii literally means civilized, so calling a non-Radchaii civilized would be an oxymoron in their language. The Radchaii have ruled and expanded for thousands of years.

They have huge spaceships that are run by advanced AIs. These AIs are also capable or controlling human bodies, so in the past when the Radchaii conquered a people, they would sometimes use their bodies as “ancillaries,” controlling them from the AI. This is morally troubling, since the personality of the person is basically overridden. These ancillaries are sometimes derided as “corpse soldiers.”

The ancillary names are a little confusing: The narrator of the book is an ancillary controlled by the ship Justice of Toren. All the ships have names like “Justice of X”, “Mercy of X”, or “Sword of X”. The ships are divided into “decades” of soldiers, who may be humans or ancillaries. The decades have names like Toren, Amaat, Etrepa, Bo, Esk, and Var. Amaat is name of the main Radchaii god, and the other names probably have some connection to their religion (e.g., I read that Esk and Var are named after the emanation of Amaat representing “beginning and ending”).

A lieutenant commands a decade. So Lieutenant Awn (important character in the first half of the book) commanded “Justice of Toren One Esk” – the highest ranking group within the Esk decade on the ship Justice of Toren. The soldiers (ancillary or human) within that decade have names like One Esk Nineteen. The “One Esk” tells which decade and group they are in, and the “Nineteen” is their number within that group.

The other odd thing is gender. In Radchaii, there are no gendered pronouns, so in this book, everyone is “she”. Occasionally, if the narrator is speaking in a different language that does have gendered pronouns, there will be a “he,” but even that is not enough to know the gender of the characters, because the narrator doesn’t always get it right herself. I found it least jarring to just imagine everyone as female unless they were obviously male.

So, the narrator is Justice of Toren. In some chapters, she is controlling many ancillaries, so you have a semi-omniscient narrator. In alternating chapters, she is controlling a single body at some time in the future, and something has clearly gone wrong. Putting it together chronologically, here’s my understanding of what happened:

Anaander Mianaai (AM), Lord of the Radch, is an AI with around a thousand bodies. Thus, impossible to kill. At some point in the recent past, she developed a split personality. One AM wants to continue conquering the universe as the Radchaii have always done. The other wants to transition to peace and stability. The original AM does not know about the peaceful AM but suspects she exists. The peaceful AM is trying to secretly sabotage things so she can come into power. Something like that.

One Esk serves Lietenant Awn on a planet called Shis’urna, where the Ors (poor) and Kould Ves (rich) live. Some Orsians discover a cache of hidden guns and report it to Awn. As she’s puzzling out who might have hidden them, it seems like it must have been someone powerful, but she can’t figure out who. Then AM shows up, and while she’s on the planet, a Kould Ves girl is murdered. The KVs march into town demanding justice from the Orsians, but it’s obviously a set-up. In the end, AM orders Awn to have all the KVs shot, which seems completely unfair. Awn does this and is sent back to Justice of Toren. Her lover, Skaiaat Awer, is left in charge.

AM secretly comes onboard Justice of Toren, and One Esk begins to figure out that AM has these two opposing consciousnesses. AM orders One Esk to shoot Awn. One Esk loves Awn but cannot disobey. She shoots her, but then she shoots AM. Other AM bodies come after her and eventually blow up the ship, but One Esk escapes – in a single body, One Esk Nineteen.

Years go by. AM doesn’t know that OE19 lives. OE19 tracks down a gun that can get through Radchaii security with the intent of shooting AM (probably a pointless gesture) and exposing the fact that there are really two AMs (not so pointless). As she tracks down the gun, she finds Seivarden Vendaii, a Radchaii soldier who was on Justice of Toren a thousand years ago, was frozen, woke up a thousand years later, and is now doing a drug called kef and basically being useless. OE19 doesn’t care for her (er, him, as it turns out, but whatever) but still saves her from dying in the snow, and in the end Seivarden goes along with OE19 on the rest of the adventure.

They go to the main Radchaii station. OE19 pretends to be a rich traveler, Breq from the Gerentate. Seivarden is her servant (which is weird to the Radchaii, but whatever). The whole station is run by an AI that is watching Breq and Seivarden closely, and Breq is trying hard not to be discovered for who she really is. But AM is also watching and figures it out.

AM grants Breq an audience, but there are two AM bodies present – one from each consciousness. When Breq reveals AM’s dual nature, one AM sings an old song that only OE19 would know (One Esk has always had an interest in music and singing), and this triggers some secret override in her programming. This AM orders OE19 to shoot the other AM, which she does. The surviving AM is the “peaceful” one, but she still needs to keep the dual nature of AM a secret, and the only way to do so now is to destroy the entire station and kill everyone on it.

Breq stops her from doing this, but a civil war begins within the Radch between the reformers and those who want to continue conquering and annexing other worlds. In the end, Breq is made a Radchaii citizen and given a ship (Mercy of Kalr) to captain, with Seivarden as her first lieutenant.