Reading: Ancillary Mercy

[white_hart]

This is the third book in Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy. I read the first two last year; I thought the first, Ancillary Justice, was brilliant and innovative, and loved the second too, so I had high expectations for the third which, for me, it didn't quite live up to. Which isn't to say that it wasn't still very, very good, but the pacing felt slightly off; where the first two books developed more slowly, with a lot of character study and only occasional action sequences, this had a lot more action and the character development felt a bit squeezed. Which was a shame, especially as there were a number of fairly major new characters I would have liked to see a lot more of. It felt rather as though Leckie got to the final book and realised that she really had more than a book's worth of material to put in it. And, possibly because so much was squeezed in, the plot was actually pretty thin and not terribly coherent, and the resolution was a bit of a deus-ex-machina (although the nature of the deus had been fairly clearly signalled from early on). There was also rather a lot of infodumping, particularly of references back to the earlier books (which feels not only frustrating, but pointless given that it's the third in a trilogy and really doesn't stand on its own, so I wish Leckie had left that out and assumed that her readers would remember) but also on occasion of things that had only been mentioned a few chapters ago.

Cavilling aside, though, and taking the trilogy as a whole, it was an enjoyable read and the depiction of a society where biological gender is completely irrelevant, coupled with Leckie's very deliberate choice of the pronoun "she" for everyone, is well done and really interesting to think about. It deals with some of the same issues as Feet of Clay, especially around the nature of personhood and artifical intelligence, and if Leckie doesn't quite tackle this a deftly as Pterry, well, who could? And, while Ancillary Mercy is the weakest book by quite a long way, it's not bad. It just felt like it could have been better.

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Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I shall comment more fully in 170 pages' time.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's pretty much my thoughts on it. But lots of my friends had loved it as much as the first two, so I wasn't sure if it was just that I'd been in a funny mood when I'd read it.

Here's my librarything notes, in case they're interesting [SPOILER WARNING]

***

I lost momentum half way through this one for a bit, and then got back into it and finished it off. Not sure why. Life was very busy, it might be more that and less the book.

It's a good end to a good series. Anything too ridiculous ('all Anandai Minaiis destroyed, Breq takes over galaxy') wouldn't have rung true, but it had its own sweet success and a promise of things continuing to go the right way in the future, with hard work. This is our space, we'll keep it safe and build on it.

Although the last book does get a bit space opera, and people running around and shooting at people. And it's _neat_ - all of the things that work out and resolve things are fair and perfectly signposted, and the consequences of things people _did_, but it is much easier to defeat the evil empire with a side kick who knows all the most powerful access codes, and practically omnipotent aliens who arrive at the last minute and say everything has to be OK. But it does play by its own rules, and it makes an excellent story.

I can see why the sad puppies would hate it. So many of the main stories and themes are 'privileged people are prejudiced idiots, look at the people in the cracks, and how the system treats them, and see how the Good Guys don't stand for that'. And a recurring theme that the Good Guys can be broken and heal, losing limbs, having to rely on others, having their addictions and nervous breakdowns and days they can't cope.

When I first read the first book, I was very drawn into the themes of one personality in many bodies, and what this means for identity and who you are. This time I read the story of Anandai Minaii, who has done an unbelievably horrible thing, and has managed to schism her entire personality because of this, more on the level of how people lie to themselves, and hide bits of what they want from other bits of their brain, and work against their own best interests because of their inability to look straight on at the things they have done.

I also noticed the theme of individual love/devotion more on this read. Breq defies the Radch because of her love for Lieutenant Awn. Big things happen that eventually threaten to bring down empires because of defending the particular people you love. It's in counterpoint to Pratchett's 'personal is not the same as important'. While I was definitely on Breq's side, I do fear for the future now they have autonomous AIs who are designed to love Their People personally and deeply, and may have very different ideas of what is 'good' from the rest of the world...

Anyway, yes. A great mix of space opera, ideas about everything from personality to AI to gender, sound left wing principles, and believable character driven plot with a lot of subtleties and politics - hard sci fi with a human heart.

[white_hart]

Thanks! I did love the trilogy, and I think there's a lot of interesting stuff in it, but I felt that the last book was less good as a book in its own right, and that the whole thing did falter a bit towards the end. And while the whole thrust of the book made it impossible for me not to think that Breq was doing the right thing by freeing the other AIs and agitating for them to be recognised as people, I was also slightly uneasy that this didn't so much put the AIs on an equal footing as put them squarely in charge, given the total dependence of the humans on the stations and ships they live on (though Breq did seem at any rate to be quite clear that she didn't want the ships to keep having ancillaries). I'm not entirely sure that would convince anyone who was anti-social justice that social justice is a good idea and equality for people who aren't them isn't going to make things worse for them...

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

And now I have finished the book, and can read your post, and say that this is much how I felt.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have tried to read any of it yesterday, when my brain probably wasn't up to much more than Peter and Jane.

[white_hart]

I probably shouldn't have tried to read it straight after Pratchett, because anything would suffer in comparison there, but I think it's not as good as the first two. Which doesn't make it bad, obviously. Just not as good.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I am like you, in thinking it my least favourite of the three (but still very good).